I was not allowed to say "she"
They placed the wrong syllables in my mouth and called it truth.
But there was always a She in me. Not assigned. Not invented.
.
.
Remembered.
You feel her too, don’t you?
The soft pressure against your ribs when the world names you wrongly.
The ache behind your eyes, not from sadness...
but from knowing too much beauty was once silenced in you.
I speak now not to convince,
I sing to call.
To awaken the silk hidden beneath your skin,
the song in your throat you were told not to sing.
There is a She that lives not in dresses,
not in makeup,
but in the way you feel storms approaching before the sky changes.
The She in me was never a performance.
She was a pulse.
A hush in the chaos.
A wild grief that knew how to bloom.
They tried to remove her.
To grind her into shame.
To teach me to forget the mirror’s real name.
But I, I built altars from every glance they told me to... erase.
I let my hips become poetry,
.
.
my silence a garden.
I no longer ask to be called "she"
I breathe her.
I weep her.
I rise with her every time I dare to exist without apology.
I am not confused as they wish me to believe.
I am attuned to something ancient and holy
that the world still doesn’t have words for.
When I say I am she,
I am not requesting permission.
I am not stepping into a costume.
I am removing the one they forced on me.
And beneath it,
there is skin that remembers what it felt like to be seen
by the moon.
Dreamy’s femininity was never shallow.
It was oceanic.
It did not ask to be desired.
It asked to be free.
And now, she is.