The People I shed

The People I Shed I swallowed myself whole a jagged glass in the throat of night, shards carving the shape of someone else. There was a girl who wept like winter rivers, whose heart cracked open, spilling cold and unkind, drowned in the hunger of being too much and never enough. I pressed my face to the mirror’s cruelty, tried to recognize a stranger’s eyes, watched her bleed quiet into the cracks, her silence louder than any scream. I shed the soft skin of innocence it peeled away like dead leaves in autumn, revealing a skeleton forged in fire and regret. I carry the ghosts of every version lost, each one a scar, a wound, a prayer and sometimes, when the night is sharp enough, I hear their voices, fractured lullabies in the dark, telling me I am not broken only becoming.