Breathing

I woke up with something burning
just behind my ribs—
not a fire exactly,
more like a name I hadn’t earned.

The mirror said nothing.
The sky didn’t clap.
But something in me
                refused to sit still.

I walked the long way,
shoes scuffed
          from all the places

                           I never belonged.

The world offered fences,
doors half-closed,
a language of “maybe later” and “not for you.”

I said nothing.

But my silence
was heavy with teeth.

This isn’t a declaration.
It’s a pulse.
It’s what I become
when I stop trying to sound like anything but me.

I’ve swallowed whole cities
just to speak in their accents.
Tried on gods like jackets,
            left them hanging
when they didn’t fit

                             the

                                weather

                                           in my bones.

People love to name things.
Fit you in the palm,
press a label to your skin
like a cure.

But I was never an answer.

I am the ache that asks the next question.

Some days I walk backwards
just to see what’s still following.

Grief.
Old selves.

A half-finished version of joy?

I don’t write poems
to be understood.
I write them to prove
I’m still here—
                      even if no one is looking.

People call that hiding.
I call it breathing
in a world that keeps
trying to set the lungs on fire.

But lately,
I’ve been noticing the cracks again—
not the broken kind,
but the kind that let light sneak in
when no one’s

                watching.

A sentence I didn’t hate.
A stranger who didn’t ask me to smile.
The way the wind carried
a leaf across the pavement
like it had somewhere worth going.

I’m not saying it’s better.
Only that I looked up today,
and the sky didn’t feel like weight.

There’s still noise in me,
still rooms I won’t enter.
But I’ve stopped apologising
for the shape of my silence.

Maybe that’s something.
Maybe that’s enough
           for now.

I still wake with the burn sometimes,
not a fire—
just warmth I don’t recognise
until it starts to hum
like a memory I haven’t made yet.

And I walk the long way home
out of habit,
                 not fear.

I don't need the mountaintop.
I just want a place
where my breath
doesn’t have to explain itself.

No declarations.
No banners.
Just this:

            I’m still here.

And some days,
that feels
like a beginning.