Room with no Corners

there is a room i visit sometimes.

not in real life,

inside my head.

a room with no corners.

no edges to hide in.

no shadows to disappear into.

just space.

wide, echoing, uncomfortably honest space.

people think clarity is a gift.

it isn’t.

clarity is a mirror with too much light on it.

it shows you everything,

the versions of yourself you outgrew,

the versions you abandoned,

and the ones you’re still pretending to be.

in that room, i sit on the floor,

and the silence sits across from me.

it doesn’t attack,

it waits.

like it knows something about me

that i’m still gathering courage to admit.

some days, the silence asks,

what are you running from?

and some days,

it asks something worse,

what are you running toward?

i never have an easy answer.

and that’s the thing.

the room never gets frustrated.

it just listens,

like it’s measuring who i am

by the truths i hesitate to speak.

but here’s the part that scares me.

every time i leave that room,

i’m a slightly different person.

not better.

not worse.

just rearranged.

like someone picked up my thoughts,

shook them like dice,

and threw them back into my skull

to see what new combination i’d live with.

and maybe that’s what becoming is.

not a straight line.

not a grand transformation.

just quiet rearrangements

that no one sees

until suddenly they do.

so if i seem strange, or distant,

or harder to read these days,

don’t worry.

i’m not breaking.

i’m not lost.

i’m just visiting the room again,

letting it peel away another version of me

that doesn’t fit anymore.

and when i walk out this time,

i want the world to understand.

i didn’t change.

i just stopped pretending

the corners were still there.