I am a living map,
not finished, not fixed —
a coastline learning the shape
of its own return.
There are mornings
the compass steadies in my hand,
and I believe I know the road.
On other days
the fog swallows the shoreline,
every direction lost to open water,
and I fumble with a language
I’ve forgotten.
I have spent years
trying to redraw myself
into something easier to follow —
fewer storms,
fewer borders,
fewer places marked
do not enter.
But the old names remain.
Abandonment.
Broken.
Survival.
They do not cancel one another.
They stand like towns
I pass through daily.
I am no longer looking
for the place where I am “cured.”
I am looking for a way
to live inside the weather.
To keep walking
with the ache and the kindness,
the fear and that small, brave light
still striking its match.
What makes me mine
is not the absence of dark,
not a compass that never spins,
but the whole unruly map —
every wrong turn,
every shoreline,
every spark
in a language
I am still learning to speak.
