I am a certified
professional romanticizer—
a curator of nostalgia,
a dream-weaver of past, present, and future.
Daydreaming grips me and pins me in place
I become paralyzed by the weight of reverie
I am a sculptor of memory,
chiseling away at the sharp edges,
polishing the jagged remnants of those who have wounded me,
and those I, in turn, have wounded.
I gild them in sentiment,
rewriting history, page by page,
until the truth is something softer,
something I can hold without it cutting back.
I have been in a season of recalibration,
fine-tuning my senses, if you will.
My sight, learning to look at my world with new eyes,
because, really, aren’t we all just living in our own little universes?
My hearing, observe, don’t absorb—
that kind of wisdom, that kind of restraint
My taste, discovering what I crave, what I reject,
what lingers sweet, what turns bitter.
My touch, to be softer, more deliberate,
less reckless with the way I reach for things.
My smell, sharpened to sniff out the bullshit
before it even settles in the air.
I have shaken hands with isolation,
sat across from it for long enough
that it no longer feels like a stranger.
Seclusion has become a familiar ghost,
hovering just within reach.
They said the eruption would be the hardest part—
the moment everything cracked open.
But no one warned me about the fallout,
the slow, agonizing gathering of debris.
Picking up the pieces, if you will.
The ‘woe is me’ train has long since left the station,
but that doesn’t mean the echoes don’t linger.
A small voice still whispers, I deserved better.
And right behind it, another answers, So did they.
I have become fluent in awkward reunions,
in the delicate, fumbling art of retying frayed knots.
(Or rather, trying to sew together what was severed—
and thread doesn’t grow back.)
So this is where we are now
None of it has been easy,
but I’ve been told it’s necessary.
And so I pray the lessons sink in.
I teeter between white-knuckling the past
and surrendering to the unknown,
one foot still planted in the familiar,
the other reaching, tentatively,
for a life I have yet to understand
Leaps of faith have become second nature.
I spent too long waiting for permission.
Now, forgiveness—that is the task at hand.
Not just for them, but for me.
For the girl I was,
the girl I am,
and whoever it is I am still becoming
Ahh, the classic tale of a girl with growing pains
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