I’ve grown a little older,
but not without splinters.
Not without nights where I bartered my worth
for a hit of approval,
a whisper of God,
a hand that didn’t shake
when it touched me.

I grew up in the shadows,
learning to read faces like maps—
trying to find home in someone else’s eyes
because I didn’t know how to live
inside my own skin.
I mistook silence for safety.
Pain for prophecy.
Love for anything that didn’t leave.

I folded myself into shapes that fit
the holes in other people.
I called it salvation.
I called it belonging.
But it was rot with perfume,
familiar like the cluttered rooms of my childhood—
loud with everything no one would say.

I searched in holy books,
pill bottles,
broken mouths,
and empty beds—
tried to baptize my wounds with anything
but myself.

And when I couldn't find love,
I tried to earn it.
Starve for it.
Bleed for it.
Be small and sweet and un-scary enough
to be worthy of it.

But all the while—
quiet as breath—
you were waiting.
The version of me I buried deep.
The one who knew how to sing
before the world taught her shame.

And now—
now I touch the mirror
like it’s a wound and a window.
And I whisper to the girl I was,
to the ghost still pacing the halls of my chest:

You are the unconditional love
you’ve been searching for your whole life.
And it was never in them.
Never in Him.
Never in hunger,
or hiding.