Survivor’s Heart

Written in 2021

I once was a little girl;
Now I’m a me-gendered semi-grown up
with a faded scarlet letter on my chest
and a burning desire to carve it out.

I was broken; still am in pieces,
but they come together like mosaic of tempered glass.

I was dying trying to survive,
Now I’m tripping on a dream
of being big, bright and beautiful.

Phasing in, phasing out, keeping my mind
on a tightrope between hope and expectation

I turn. I run. Whether to or from,
I run with the energy I’ve stolen
from my fears and dreams.

If ever I look back at my shame,
I marvel at distance I can stare down
the barrel of my loaded history
and the possibilities now I leave it all behind.

Wasn’t it just yesterday I could pinch myself
and still feel nothing but the emptiness
of my mechanical heart?

Wasn’t it just yesterday I could breathe my life away
and still be paralyzed in a whirlwind of self-doubt and hopelessness?

I carry bags and boxes of fragmented memories and ghosts
in my encapsulated, mosaic heart
and clasp my hands in a secular prayer
for the chance to see my unborn dreams

for I am nobody’s savior but my own.