My Own True Friend

I used to wake and argue with the mirror,

cataloguing every fault like unpaid debts,

wearing my own name like an ill-fit coat,

afraid someone might see how it pulled at the seams.

I chased approval like a distant lighthouse,

wading into waves that never learned my language,

dimming my colors to match other skies,

calling it love when I vanished from myself.

Some nights the mind turned jury and judge,

every memory dragged to the stand in chains,

sentenced for the crime of being imperfect,

paroled only to return with heavier shame.

But there was a morning that did not arrive with trumpets—

just a thin gray light at the edge of the curtain,

and a small, tired voice in my chest

whispering, stay.

So I sat with the chaos instead of fleeing,

poured tea for the shivering parts of me,

listened as they stuttered out their stories,

hands shaking, but finally heard.

I learned to place a hand on my own shoulder

the way I would comfort a grieving friend,

to say, you may falter and still be welcome,

you may be unfinished and still be home.

Progress is quieter than legends promised:

no grand revelation, no sudden halo,

only the slow unclenching of a lifetime of fists,

the soft astonishment of not turning away.

Now, when doubt knocks loud at midnight,

I make room for it beside my breathing,

and together we watch the dark grow thinner

at the window’s patient rim of dawn.

I have not arrived at any final harbor,

but I walk beside the self I once abandoned,

and step by step, between each careful breath,

I begin again to be my own true friend.