I didn't recognize myself for a long time, not in mirrors, not in other people's faces

When they looked at me, not in my own hands

I'd been so many things for so many people, that the original had gotten buried

Shape is not about how you look. It's about the space you take up, the way you stand in a room

The way your voice sounds when no one is listening. I had forgotten both, spent years adjusting

Shrinking, expanding into gaps left by other people, filling shapes that weren't mine to fill

There's a particular loss in that, not dramatic, no single moment, just a slow erosion, the way

Water doesn't break a stone, it just keeps moving until something gives, and one day you reach for

Yourself and find a smooth surface where the edges used to be worn down, accommodated, unrecognizable

But edges come back, that's what nobody tells you, not all of them, not the same ones

But something returns if you give it enough silence, enough space, enough mornings of just sitting

With what's left

I found my shape again, not the old one that once gone

Worn away by years of becoming, what the room required

But this one, this one is mine, built from what survived, carved by what I lost, harder in some places, more open In others not healed, they're recognizable, finally, recognizable

I stood in front of a mirror last winter, not looking for beauty, not looking for damage

Iust looking, and something looked back, that I knew, not from before, from underneath the pot that never Learned to perform, the pot that stayed

Through all four rooms, through all the nights, through every wire I cut, and every morning I didn't ask for, still There, waiting, not patiently, just inevitably, the way your own shape is always

The last thing to leave

I found my shape again, different weight, different edges, the same core I've been burying under other people's Versions of me

Not perfect, not finished, but mine, every scar, a contour, every loss a line that defines where I end

And the world begins, not healed, defined

You don't rebuild from nothing, you rebuild from what refused to disappear, find that, hold it, learn its edges, Like you're reading in the dark

Because you are, and that's exactly how you find your way back