I swallowed myself whole
a jagged glass in the throat of night,
shards carving the shape of someone else.

There was a girl who wept like winter rivers,
whose heart cracked open, spilling cold and unkind,
drowned in the hunger of being too much and never enough.

I pressed my face to the mirror’s cruelty,
tried to recognize a stranger’s eyes,
watched her bleed quiet into the cracks,
her silence louder than any scream.

I shed the soft skin of innocence
it peeled away like dead leaves in autumn,
revealing a skeleton forged in fire and regret.

I carry the ghosts of every version lost,
each one a scar, a wound, a prayer
and sometimes, when the night is sharp enough,
I hear their voices,
fractured lullabies in the dark,
telling me I am not broken
only becoming.