✩✧ 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕞𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕤 𝕀’𝕕 𝕤𝕖𝕖 𝕚𝕟 𝕞𝕪 𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕤𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕟 𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕦𝕥𝕖𝕤 ✧✩

In the first minute,  

I’d see the younger version of myself —  

the one who mistook tenderness for permanence,  

who believed every warm hand was a vow  

and not a temporary shelter.  

She glows like a ghost who doesn’t know she’s dead yet.

The second minute would drag up the hands I clung to  

long after they’d gone cold.  

The ones I tried to resurrect with loyalty,  

with softness,  

with the kind of devotion that bruises the giver.  

I’d watch myself begging the past to stay alive.

Minute three would be a gallery of faces  

I should’ve held longer,  

and the ones I should’ve released sooner.  

A reel of almosts,  

half‑loves,  

and the quiet betrayals I swallowed  

because I didn’t know my voice was allowed to be loud.

The fourth minute would be the rupture —  

the night I realized survival isn’t the same as living,  

that endurance is not a virtue  

when it keeps you in rooms that starve you.  

I’d watch myself walk away shaking,  

but walking away all the same.

Minute five would soften,  

showing the small salvations —  

the laughter that stitched me back together,  

the mundane mercies that kept me from unraveling.  

Proof that joy doesn’t need to be grand  

to be holy.

Minute six would hurt the most.  

It would show the people I loved enough to bleed for,  

the ones who carved their initials into my ribs  

and left me to heal around the absence.  

It would show the versions of me  

that died in the name of becoming.

And in the seventh minute —  

the final, narrowing breath —  

I think I’d understand the quiet truth:  

I was never meant to be flawless,  

only faithful to my own becoming.  

I lived with a trembling heart,  

a stubborn hope,  

a spine that refused to stay broken.  

I lived.  

And that was enough.

-𝕃ℝ 🖤