I wonder who I might have been,

If I hadn’t worn these borrowed skins,

Each thread a piece of someone else,

To fit the world, to quiet myself.

 

The voices loud, the masks I wore,

To please, to bend, to be ignored—

I lost my shape in tangled ties,

And hid my truth in silent sighs.

 

The goals I set, the dreams I drew,

Were scattered in the winds that blew—

A burst of fire, then faded fast,

Too tired to fight, too drained to last.

 

What heights, what stars, might I have touched,

If staying still hadn’t hurt so much?

If focus burned as bright as fear,

And time moved slow instead of sheer?

 

I wonder now, as days go by,

Who I’d have been, had I not tried

To shrink myself, to fit, to blend,

To chase approval without end.

 

But still, within these restless hands,

There lies a will, a heart that stands—

A woman carved from loss and might,

Still reaching toward her own true light.