Atgal

Michem Marie-Laure


Uncharted Realms Within

I am not who you think I am.

 

I am not a block of clay for you to mold however you see fit. I am not something you can shape, pick apart, and smooth back together to straighten out the edges that seem too rough or too sharp to you. I am not soft and pliant, and I won't stick to your hands when you press into me, when you try to leave your imprints on my surface. I am not yours to change. I am not yours to create.

 

I will not be a product of your actions, submissive and obediently cowering underneath your heels as you walk your path. Your decisions won't be what breaks and mends my spine. They won't be what holds me back this time. And if you keep walking towards the cliff you've chosen, then that is between you and the drop, and not between me and you and the aftermath.

 

My life is not yours. I am not an extension of your existence, no vessel for the dreams you dreamt but never got to live. I am not bound to your vision of what I should and shouldn't be. My life is mine, and it will become what it was meant to be sooner or later. It will flower despite your hands closed around its stem, and it will spread despite you depriving the soil of water.

 

I am not who you think I am.

 

I am not docile, a compliant and simple-minded mouse in the corner of your attic, gazing from the shadows, running in circles, and finding contentment in the repeating floor patterns. I am coming apart at the seams, slowly but surely, and I will take all of these things I find inside of me and cherish them. Even if you've told me they were wrong and that no one would want to see them, least of all the world, I no longer care. I am not who you think of when you think of me. I am so much more, and it's refusing to be stifled any longer. It is no longer contained by the prison I've built for protection. It is coming, and you can't stop it.

 

And it will be loud and honest and angry, and I will no longer be the image of me you've created in your head. I am boiling over the edge of the pot. I am burning out of control. I am that one science experiment that will explode in your face and melt the skin off your bones if you shake me a little too hard, a little too long. And I am raw, and I am here, and I am alive.

 

And I am not who you thought I was.

 

I have always been more.


 




Pateikta: 03:04 Sat, 16 March 2024 by : Michem Marie-Laure age : 19