“At the Confluence of Shadows”

Where does one commence?

How does one give voice to the genesis of their existence,

to the fragile tremors of a life already fractured?

Should I catalog the earliest echoes of memory,

or linger on those moments that rent the soul and reshaped its contours?

Perhaps I have lived many lives,

and yet how can I reckon with each without rendering them small,

without betraying their weight?

I write from the narrow ledge between beginning and middle,

where time coils like smoke,

and every step forward is haunted by the footprints left behind.

Life is unpredictable, yet we clutch at certainty as though it could anchor us

amid the shifting currents of fate.

If I could speak to the girl I once was, seven and trembling,

I would tell her to brace herself,

never to glance down into the abyss that watches hungrily beneath her.

I would urge her to speak her mind,

to resist the silence that binds,

for the wounds of words left unspoken

fester longer than any inflicted by others.

I would whisper,

your father is never coming back—

stop waiting for shadows to fill his absence.

A decade past, I severed the illusion of his presence,

discarding the hope of love from a man

who chose another world over mine.

I measured myself against the shining mold of his new family,

and found only hollowness staring back.

I had been neglected, unseen, left to wither beneath the weight of disregard.

I existed, yet I was no longer alive.

Then I seized the fragile promise of self-reclamation,

rebuilding from the debris of my fractured identity.

And yet, darkness returned—an assault that hollowed me again,

a cell of my own making, walls closing tight,

and I withdrew, observing the world through fractured glass.

Others thrived, their lives gleaming through lenses I could not penetrate,

while I dissolved into shadow.

It took years to reclaim even a fragment of myself,

to rise from the ashes of despair and confront the ghosts that lingered.

Now, I stand at a precipice.

I am alone, yes, yet I no longer tremble in the cage of my past.

I soar, carrying the remnants of every shattered life,

haunted yet unbroken,

for I have glimpsed the darkness

and emerged, though scarred, into the dim light of my own becoming.

And still, I wonder how the world may twist me again.

I welcome it this time,

for I have learned to dance with shadows,

to greet the night with open eyes,

to carve a life from the marrow of my own resilience.

To the beginning of my new life,

I step without fear,

and with all the ghosts I have made my allies.