Life begins mid-scene,
no script in my hands,
just a trembling voice
and the weight of the spotlight.

I stumble through lines
I never agreed to speak,
yet each word lands
as if carved in stone.

How cruel, this urgency—
to shape myself in seconds,
to wear a costume of flesh
without knowing the story.

Still, the stage keeps turning,
stars lit above my head,
and the only truth I carry:
every flaw is part of the play.

They called us weak,
but we returned brighter—
diamonds no longer hidden,
thunder no longer hushed.

I walk into the storm,
shoulders heavy,
yet my spirit unyielding.

The world may strike,
but I carry a kingdom in my veins.
Every step forward
is a promise kept:
we will reach the home
beyond the river.

Your eyes say forever,
your silence says fleeting.
You chain me with your touch,
yet leave me doubting
what name to give this fever.

I would surrender—
life, body, soul—
if this were love.
But if it is only desire,
then I am nothing more
than a flame you’ll let burn out.

Still, I stay,
hoping you’ll call it love.

Everything is too
sugar-spine, salt-lipped,
staticstitched and jitterglow.

I can’t sit still
without turning into
a girl-shaped emergency.

I keep my synonyms in jars—
one for ache,
one for almost,
one for the word I made up
that means I miss you so much I become a faucet.

Language is a loose tooth.
I tongue it until it bleeds metaphor.
Call it poetry.
Call it coping.
Call it anything but what it is:
me, peeling the world into vowels
because I’m scared if I say what I mean,
you’ll hear it.

And then what?

You’ll answer?

You’ll echo?

You’ll send a voice memo
saying same
and I’ll combust on the Q train
like a well-read matchbook?

God, I am so
caption-core,
pun-drunk,
rhyme-accident-prone.
I named my stomach pit afterthought.
I named my wrists reminder.

And I named you
don’t.

But I still say it
every time I open my mouth
to speak.