Framed in Shadows I Never Cast

They tried to shape my story

from the grain of their own assumptions,

carving silhouettes in dark tones

and calling them truth.

 But I am not the shadow they sketched in haste.

I am the warm weight of sun?washed stone,

the steady pulse of earth beneath bare feet,

the quiet glow of something real.

  Their whispers never fit my edges.

Their frames were too small, too brittle,

too far from the texture of my becoming.

 I rise from their outlines

like light slipping through cedar branches—

soft, certain, uncontained.

 I walk in colors they never bothered to see,

in a brightness they could not name,

crafted from my own hands,

my own history,

my own truth.

 Let them keep their shadows.

I am made of something older,

something honest,

something that refuses to dim

for anyone’s convenience.