I used to feel like a guest inside my own skin—
moving through the world like a ghost,
learning how to leave myself
without ever going anywhere.
I pressed myself into shapes
that were never mine,
folded quiet,
softened my edges
until I fit the room.
My light didn’t vanish—
it thinned,
flickered,
burned down slowly
with every measured breath,
until even my smile
forgot its way back.
For a time, I was lost.
I learned the geography of avoidance:
eyes down, shoulders tense,
breath held in public spaces.
A stranger’s hand on my shoulder
could stop my heart mid-step.
My body became an earthquake of memory—
fault lines splitting open
at the wrong touch,
the wrong tone,
the wrong closeness.
I was taken instead of held,
left shaking in the aftermath.
I mistook endurance for healing,
numbness for peace,
called it strength
when it was only survival.
I thought I would always be this—
a shell that learned how to function,
how to smile on cue,
how to carry damage quietly.
Then I met you.
You didn’t pull.
You didn’t demand.
You stayed still long enough
for my body to decide.
You held me
without trying to own me,
without asking me to disappear,
and something in me loosened—
not healed,
but breathing.
I am coming back to myself
in fragments,
in pauses,
in the space between flinching and trust.
I want to believe this is safety.
I want to believe I can stay.
But even now—
as I let myself be held—
my hands still shake,
waiting for the ground to move again.
The Altar 