24

i’m on the cusp of something.

i’ve spent my early twenties stripping myself back to my purest form
the realest, rawest me i’ve ever been:
purgatory, self-imposed.

i started by cutting back the pricker bushes that grew up my legs, tight-gripped around me
tying me down to that house
to the man who lived in it
and i walked out.
i walked out with my arms full of my mother’s silver and my eyes full of stars
to claim my future for myself.

i shed his name and chose my own.
i made a home for myself
in my apartment
in my body
a place to feel safe
a place to feel free
to do what i wanted to be who i wanted
i hung the nudes i sketched in school on the walls and set up my easel in the corner to remind myself that i create my best work when i draw the line.

i’ve been pruning myself
the buzz of clippers is my meditation
a weekly ritual of cutting away the old to make way for the new.
a practice and a declaration.

i’m proud of myself.

i’m proud of who i came from.
i look back at pictures of them and see the layers i’ve shed since then,
the husks of past selves strewn behind me like papery snakeskins.

i feel new—renewed.

baptized in shower tears and the herb scented oils i massage into my skin every night
i love to nurture myself.
to love this self that i cut and shed and pruned my way back to
this tender inner child whose curiosity is insatiable and whose creativity is limitless
and whose protector is bold and shrewd with a backbone that has borne the weight of everything they feared they couldn’t carry.

i shrink from nothing.

i have already faced my worst fears and emerged victorious.
i have risen to every occasion and loved myself the way i have always deserved to be loved.

i’m on the cusp of something

the morning is a new era.