Before Otherwise

a poem

Before my parents,

before my church,

before the world told me otherwise,

I believed I was me.

I believed in me.

Before gender roles,

before diets,

before my body became

a problem to solve,

I grew at my own pace

reaching,

unfolding,

becoming.

My heart knew

where it wanted to go.

Love came naturally

before fear learned my name.

Then came sermons.

Expectations.

A thousand small corrections.

The world handed me

a script,

and I performed it

for decades.

Years gathered,

layer upon layer,

until the girl

who trusted herself

was buried beneath them.

Still,

beneath the rubble,

she waited.

Not to become

someone new—

but to remember

who she was.