Somewhere Between who I Was And Who I’ll Be

Life didn’t ask. It just arrived

loud, unruly, and without warning.

It came with fists full of breakage and a mouthful of lessons

I never asked to learn.

I used to be softer.

Careless, maybe.

Bright with a kind of innocence that made wishes feel possible.

That version of me never thought twice about starting over.

She believed every ending was just a different kind of open door.

I don’t know where she went. Maybe she got buried under all the should-have-beens.

Maybe she faded in the long, quiet ache of things not going the way they were supposed to.

Now, I feel like a hallway.

Empty. Stretched between where I used to live and a future I don’t know how to enter.

There’s movement in me

but it’s slow, like thawing ice.

There’s desire but it trembles under the weight of fear and memory.

I am tired of waiting for clarity.

Of pretending I’m not unraveling.

Of looking for signs that never arrive in the shape I expect.

Still…some part of me is reaching

quietly, fragile as breath

toward something softer, something sacred, just beyond the fog.

Not quite hope,

but maybe the beginning of it.