The Paper That Spoke My Name

The Paper That Spoke My Name

Ink settles like truth across a quiet morning,

Fingers trace stories that feel far too close,

A woman stands printed in black and white certainty,

Her silence louder than most.

The headlines shout what I never admitted,

Bold words I tried to outrun in my chest,

They dress up the cracks with charm and illusion,

Call restless longing a test.

Columns of whispers press in from the margins,

Each one a version of who I became,

Choices I carried like jewels in the daylight,

Heavy as guilt all the same.

No gentle escape in the lines that surround me,

No soft place left where regret cannot reach,

Freedom once tasted now lingers like absence,

A lesson too stubborn to teach.

The world I imagined feels distant and folded,

Like pages turned over too quickly to feel,

Love was a language I thought I could master,

Now it reads foreign and unreal.

A life full of movement, of nights without anchors,

Crowds that applauded a freedom I wore,

Yet somewhere a quieter dream kept on waiting,

Unopened behind a closed door.

No one can edit the truth once it’s printed,

No ink can erase what the heart understands,

The story is mine in its flawed, aching beauty,

Written in my own unsteady hands.

So let it be seen in its raw, honest telling,

No need to soften the weight of its claim,

A woman once lost in the noise of her choices,

Now standing, still learning her name.

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