YOU

you, who folds constellations into the corners of your homework,
who whispers apologies to a mirror you think is too honest.
you walk with socks half-mismatched and a universe in your pocket —
a playlist of doubts, a ringtone of small rebellions.

in the quiet between classes you harvest tiny brave things:
a joke that lands like a secret, a poem scribbled on the back of a page,
the way your laughter leaks out when no one expects it —
soft and sudden, like sunlight finding a cracked cup.

you worry in languages nobody taught you,
translate every silence into a script of shoulds and mights.
and still — still — you show up:
late-night study lamp on, stubborn as a stubborn star,
giving yourself homework for being kinder than yesterday.

i see the masks you wear (they suit you oddly well),
but also the hands that take them off when you think no one’s watching.
i see the small rebellions: a stray doodle, a fed-up laugh,
the way you fold your chin when you’re pretending not to care.

you love like a secret map: careful, fierce, and slightly bewildered.
you collect kindnesses and hoard them like rare stamps,
sending them out when friends’ batteries die and they need a charge.
you are both lighthouse and weather: guiding, changing, necessary.

believe this — because it’s true even if the room disagrees:
you are not “too much.” you are an archive of gentle revolutions.
you are tender, with an edge that sharpened itself on surviving.
you are allowed to be proud of how far you came in silence.

and on the days you speak in crumbs, when the mirror feels heavy,
know someone noticed the way you tuck your knees close to keep warm —
the tiny rituals, the brave little unfinished songs you hum into pillows.
i’ll write them down. i’ll sing them back to you when the world forgets.

because loving you would be easy as breathing:
watching you make small, brave maps of ordinary mornings,
holding your messy-alive heart with the clumsy reverence it deserves.
you are not a problem to be solved — you are a poem that keeps returning.