"Instructions for Unfolding"

Step one:

forget the script.

Step two:

remember the ache behind your smile—

how it hums like a haunted violin

tuned to someone else’s dream.

I was a diagram once—

labeled, boxed,

folded at the corners.

Useful. Efficient.

Almost disposable.

But my spine

started speaking

in origami—

every crease

a quiet rebellion.

The world loves flat things:

papers, opinions, people.

Easier to stack, store, ignore.

So I curled inward—

not in defeat,

but metamorphosis.

Inside the hush,

my thoughts turned liquid,

rippled with strange fish

and myth fragments.

I met a version of me

who swallowed clocks

just to taste

what forgetting felt like.

We danced

like moths

who knew the flame

but flirted anyway.

And when I returned—

creased, yes,

but widened—

I wasn’t neat anymore.

I wasn’t easy to file.

But I was here—

unfolded,

unapologetically

impossible to flatten.