I’ve always been fluent in the in-between… I’ve always been fluent in the in-between— Born with my head stitched into a dream, my ribs wide open like a door no one ever thought to lock, just a neon vacancy sign flickering in the rain. People walked through me like I wasn’t something built to break, and when I shattered, I apologized— like pain was impolite, like truth was a sin. I learned early how to hold my breath under floodwater feelings, how to drown slow and quiet and still smile like it doesn’t hurt. If I let the ocean take me, at least I’m not on fire. If I burn, at least the cold finally dies. There’s no winning here, there’s only turning chaos into music. You want to know my story? It’s written in scars that rhyme accidentally, in bruised metaphors and crooked lullabies. I’m that shadow between thunder and lightning, that moment when you’re not sure if you’re safe or if the world is cracking open beneath your feet. Fluent in the spaces people leave, fluent in the silence between “I’m fine” and the truth that chokes behind it. I could translate every unspoken fear you swallow, every fracture you hide beneath “I’m strong.” I know what it’s like to bleed invisible. I know what it’s like to hope someone notices anyway. I was raised by contradictions — too soft to be steel, too steel to be soft, holding tenderness like a weapon and holding rage like a song I wasn’t brave enough to scream. They said “grow up” like it was a cure, like adulthood wasn’t another cage decorated with expectations. So I carved myself into something kinder than the world, and harder than the pain that taught me how to survive. I learned to speak the dialect of broken glass, and let it shine like glitter in the right light. I found grace in the wreckage, found poetry in the rubble nobody else could see. Don’t look at me like I’m fragile— I’m not porcelain, I’m volcanic. I erupt when I love. I erupt when I lose. I erupt because lava is the only language hot enough to speak the truth of who I am. Some days I’m a prayer, other days I’m a grave. Either way, I’m sacred. Either way, I hold what life gave me, and I keep breathing out fire until my lungs forget the taste of fear. I’ve always been fluent in the in-between— a ghost to some, a burning star to others. I never fit the mold, never learned to shrink. My heart was never engineered to be quiet, it beats like a storm drum, like thunder in a cathedral, like grief that refuses to be numb. And if you ask what I want— I want someone who knows that earthquakes are part of my language, that silence is my armor, that vulnerability is my rebellion. Someone who walks through that open door, not because it’s easy, but because they know I’m worth the splinters. So I’ll keep living like a bridge between worlds, holding the dream and the nightmare at the same time, refusing to collapse even when the wind tries to break me. There’s beauty in being the battlefield, there’s honesty in the bruise, and if I’m torn, I’m torn open for a reason. I’ve always been fluent in the in-between— and I’m done apologizing for it. If my ribs are a door, then enter gently. If my heart is a storm, then learn to dance in the rain. If my soul is a fractured language, then let me teach you the dialect of survival. Because I didn’t come this far to close the door that’s always been open— I came to show that even broken things can hold light, and that even shattered glass can reflect something beautiful.
