(a poem in six stained glass windows)
I. BECOMING
I used to flinch when someone said
“You’re gonna be big someday,”
like—how big?
How loud?
How lonely?
How much of me
do I have to lose
to be loved that widely?
I kissed a boy once
just to see if I could still feel small.
I could.
then I wrote about it,
rhymed tongue with undone,
called it healing.
Some nights I Google myself
with the same hunger
you search a symptom.
Just hoping it’s not fatal.
Just hoping it is.
Just hoping there’s finally
a name for it.
My digital footprint is a shrine
to girls I outgrew but never buried,
their teenage poems
still written in Sharpie
on the back of my ribs.
My first book will ship with
a hand strung bracelet that says
“I survived myself.”
II. PERFORMING
Every time I tell the story
I’m a little more clever,
a little less heartbroken,
a little more
dangerous,
a little more wrong.
I have a bad habit
of leaving confessions in comment sections—
breadcrumbs on the internet floor,
for anyone sad enough
to mistake me
for a map.
I used to rehearse goodbyes in mirrors,
just to see if my eyes could lie
as well as my mouth did.
They could.
They still can.
They called me brave
for saying it out loud.
But I only said it
because the silence was louder.
The secret to staying soft
is deleting the parts
where I’m anything else.
I write best in hotel rooms
because they feel borrowed, too—
because no one expects
the towels to stay white
or the girl to stay quiet.
III. DISGUISING
“SENSITIVE” was printed on my sweatshirt
the night he told me
I hurt myself through him—
at least now he can’t say
I never gave a trigger warning.
Half of my closet is clearance rack chaos,
the other half is second-hand salvation—
each hanger a theory
of who I’ll be next.
Sometimes I dress like the version of me
I think he could’ve stayed for.
Every good body day feels like a plot twist,
like God gave me
a guest pass
to precious.
He said I was too much,
but whispered it like praise.
Now I underline his fears
in neon.
Some nights I still wake at 3:14
to texts I dreamt he sent—
all apologies
and no punctuation.
I screenshot compliments
like they’re prescriptions,
take two every six hours,
pray my body doesn’t reject them.
One day, I’ll ask the pharmacy
if they carry praise
in extended-release.
Every dress in my closet whispers
“wear me to his funeral,”
but he keeps refusing to die,
so I just overdress for brunch—
and sit facing the door
just in case.
IV. SEARCHING
I footnoted the grief.
Added asterisks to all my ‘I’m fine’s.'
Even my browser history
reads like a ******* fire.
My greatest fear isn’t that I’ll fail—
it’s that someday I’ll win
and realize the trophy feels
exactly like loneliness,
but heavier.
I read horoscopes for signs of relapse,
Googling “Do Libras experience nostalgia?”
at 5:15 a.m. like a drunk astrologer
pleading with the stars
to cut me off.
I used to edit Wikipedia pages
for characters who reminded me of myself,
changing their endings to
“she survives,”
“she gets out,”
“she burns the diary.”
They banned my IP
for excessive optimism.
I took it as a compliment.
V. RECKONING
The girls who follow me online
all think I have answers.
I don’t.
I have questions in fancy fonts
and delusions of grandeur
dressed as advice.
My therapist asks me to describe “progress,”
and I show her unsent messages,
leftover pills,
and a notebook filled with
poems written in my sleep—
and one that woke me up
Screaming.
Some of you highlight my breakdowns
like they’re quotes.
I get it.
I do it too.
VI. ALONE
My brain is a group chat
of all the selves I've ghosted,
texting in all caps
and sending GIFs that scream,
"Remember when you thought you'd be happy by now?"
If this poem goes viral,
tell them I made it big.
Tell them I got loud.
Tell them I wasn’t lonely.
Just alone
by design.
Like all cathedrals are.
This is the cathedral I built with what was left.
A six-part spiral. A myth I wrote to outlive myself.
Let me know which window you walked through first.
