God,

was there ever a moment that was mine?

Not carved from someone else’s hands—

not stitched with shame and shoulds?

I was born,

and the world handed me a script

before I knew how to speak.

They dressed me in colors I never chose,

put dolls in my lap

and silence in my mouth.

They smiled when I obeyed,

when I nodded instead of questioned,

when I traded sparks for safety.

Every laugh was borrowed.

Every step rehearsed.

My hands? Not mine.

My voice? Echoes.

Even my favorite song,

God, even that—

someone told me to like it

before I ever heard the melody.

You let me grow in the image of their comfort

not my freedom.

I was sculpted smooth—no edges—

a porcelain version of myself

too perfect to bleed,

too hollow to live.

Now I’m 25.

And I peel back the years

like rotted wallpaper

just to see if there’s something real underneath—

but it’s all paper.

Layer after layer

of “You should be,”

“Why can’t you just,”

“Don’t you want to be loved?”

Who was I supposed to be?

Who died before she got to breathe?

Did she like to dance in thunderstorms,

or carve things out of wood?

Would she have worn leather and laughed too loud,

or whispered poems to the wind?

I’ll never know her.

She’s buried beneath expectations

and the praise I bled myself for.

I mourn her like a mother mourns

a child she never held—

aching for weight in her arms

that never came.

And I’m furious.

I’m goddamn furious.

That I have to build myself

from a ruin

because you wouldn’t let me start

as just me.

I scream into the sky

and no one answers.

Not you.

Not them.

Not even her.

There’s no grave to visit—

no stone that reads:

“Here lies the girl I could have been.”

Just me,

alone,

trying to be born at 25.