June 19th, two-thousand-thirteen,
The sky too blue, the sun too clean.
A law book borrowed, fineliners bright,
A notebook stained with late-night fight.
I sat on grass that didn’t care
If I became what they prepared.

Angelica spun in sunlight's grace,
Red hair loud in an open space.
Ollie watched with narrowed eyes—
Joy offended him, I realised.
But I was watching someone else.
Someone quieter than myself.

Tom.

Half-lost in thought, half drawing lines,
Margin boxes, broken signs.
He never spoke just to be heard,
He studied silence like a word.
I sat beside him, notebook out,
A calm between our seeds of doubt.

He asked me once,
“Do people ever become who they dream of being?”
And I replied without looking up,
“That’s what becoming is.”

He smiled—small, almost sad.
Like hope remembered what it never had.

Back then they wanted rings and vows,
Ceremony, silence, and compliant brows.
But I was mapping flights and futures,
Filling scholarship forms under fluorescent sutures.
I was leaving.
I had to.
To become more than someone’s daughter in a dress
I never chose.

Tom stayed.
I heard pieces, stories.
His voice buried beneath late nights and old glories.
And then, years later,
Scrolling through strangers and almosts,
There he was—older, maybe lost.

I typed:

Hi. How are you?
I don’t know if you remember… first year uni.

Click.
Send.

And somewhere, quietly,
The past exhaled.

Becoming is a coming-of-age novel that follows two lovers who meet as students at a prestigious university, filled with ambition and hope for the future. She dreams beyond the cultural and familial expectations pressing down on her—expectations that demand marriage and stability over growth and independence. Instead, she chooses a path of education and purpose, eventually moving to Harvard to pursue a dual degree in public health and medicine, determined to challenge the political structures that govern healthcare. She later becomes health minister.

Meanwhile, he remains behind, drifting from the person he once aspired to be. As she builds her future, he struggles with sobriety and the collapse of his own ambitions. Years later, curiosity and nostalgia lead her to find his Instagram profile. With a tentative "Hi, how are you? I don’t know if you remember…" she reaches out, reopening a chapter that never fully closed.

Spanning continents, ideologies, and inner transformations, Becoming is a story about identity, resilience, and the sometimes painful, sometimes beautiful path to becoming who we are meant to be.

Let me know what you think!

On the twenty-fourth of May,
In the year ninety-five,
My father rushed into his little house—
No. 2, on a street that barely breathed.
Half brick, half wood,
It bulged slightly on the side,
A stubborn house that refused to collapse,
Like him.

He had studied far away,
With Professor Harding—
A man of levels and formulas,
Of tables and truth.
My father would say,
“What a remarkable book!”
And wave his hands through the candle smoke,
As if stirring the periodic table to life.

There’s always room for dessert—
Pie and eggnog ice cream,
Balanced on separate plates,
We eat in alternating bites,
Sweet rhythms of shared delight.

Later, we’d wander the market—
Ginger, turnips, parsnips,
Heads of lettuce cradled in arms.
The peaches were translucent,
Like little suns behind a veil.

Rachael and I would lock the door,
Retreat to my room,
Our feast a secret ritual
Near summer’s fading edge.

I was fifteen pounds thinner then,
Very chic, I thought—
A shadow of myself,
But glowing with iced melon
Eaten quietly in the tea-room at work.

Paris—ah, Paris—
Was everything I’d dreamt.
I stood on the hotel balcony,
Hot chocolate in one hand,
A chocolate croissant in the other.

We were hungry, and
Everything was for me.
It was a fine moment.
A moment that tasted
Like more.

Barely seen by the human eye,
Oats, beans, and tomatoes lie—
Buried deep by patient hands,
Beneath the soil of fertile lands.

From silence springs a mighty oak,
A hundred years in leaves
The root of steam and spinning steel—
Seeds turned the gears of the industrial wheel.

Morning bagels, cotton threads,
Blankets, harvest, daily breads—
They stage the greatest show on Earth,
Of silent power, quiet birth.

What wisdom do they hold within,
To rise again, to grow, to win?
They travel far, they stand their ground,
In wind and wave, they still are found.

They guard, endure, and reunite,
With every dawn, they seek the light.
Across the fields, across the seas,
They whisper dreams upon the breeze.

Six hundred seeds in rows aligned,
Each with a legacy, each designed.
Given water, sun, and space,
They bloom in forms no eye can trace—

In colours bold, in shapes unknown,
Each seed becomes a world its own.
Holding hope in fragile shells,
A future that the earth foretells.

Fruits, seeds, and blooms,
Bare feet pressing into soft, mossy ground—
A green light spills like a carpet
Across an island hushed in surreal quiet.
Water glides over stones,
Each rock alive with shadow and shine.
I lift my gaze to the endless blue above,
Where even the edge of a leaf feels extraordinary.
Earth, sand, and pine needles press into my soles.
Can you hear the echo?
These hands can shift the earth—
But it will never be enough for you.
We are animals stealing from the sky.
Even the smallest insect leaves its trace.
The landscape shifts around me,
Yet the path—worn and winding—remains.

You gather stars from the night sky,

one by one, 
as if their light could fill the silence in me —
but even galaxies fall short.
Don’t hold my words too tightly.

I gambled on something fragile,

hoped the weight of chance 
might land in love.
I want this to stay.

To linger in the space 
where laughter once came easy.

Now, every breath feels heavier,
 but I face the shadows head-on.
These hands —
they could cradle more than constellations, 
lift the weight of dreams.

But even towers laced in gold

feel hollow
 when you look right through me.
I take it all in the ache, the beauty, the stillness —
and yet,

I remain
 less than what you seek