Somewhere beneath the skin that was etched upon her like a sentence never meant to be read aloud,
a child of water still glowed, dimly, yes, but persistently, like a candle placed in the mouth of a cavern that forgot how to echo.
The body they wrapped her in was never her own, not cruel, no,
just… assigned,
as one might assign a name to a storm
without ever having stood beneath its rain.
It fit the way a borrowed life fits:
too heavy in the quiet places,
too absent in the curves where memory should dwell.
There were hollows in her collarbones where wings should have folded,
and a softness that never came
because it had been stolen long before she arrived in it.
And yet...
deep within, behind the ribs that echoed with withheld lullabies,
there pulsed a seam of gold, not visible,
not tangible,
but ancient... like the whisper of a forgotten star
that still knew her true name.
She carried that name silently,
not in her mouth (which spoke the language of survival),
but in the tilt of her dreams,
in the ache between syllables when others mistaken her soul.
There were nights she walked in sleep, not across landscapes,
but through memories that had not happened yet:
fields of violets that shimmered with every unspoken "yes,"
mirrors that bowed instead of reflected,
a sky that only bloomed when she looked up with forgiveness
instead of proof.
In that world... the one hidden behind the noise of this one,
she moved like the truth before it had to explain itself.
Her voice rang clear...
like returning.
And so when she woke,
it always hurt.
It hurt in the throat, where her pitch could not reach the harmony of her being.
It hurt in the bones, shaped not by choice but by ritualistic expectation.
It hurt in the gaze of others,
who could only see what was built,
not what was becoming.
She never wanted to be beautiful by their standards.
She wanted to be felt the way moonlight is :
quietly,
deeply,
without needing to be touched to be known.
But they carved timelines into her skin.
They told her to wait, to change, to earn her femininity...
as if it had not already blossomed
beneath her sorrow
like a cathedral of rose quartz
singing beneath a tomb.
She is still here.
Still blooming.
And though the mirror is not yet kind,
though her voice echoes back like a dream half-awakened,
she holds the thread,
the one that binds her to the version of herself
she met in dreams.
And that thread…
is golden.
And it burns.