“I’m Forced to Be What They See”

They hand me a mask

and call it my face,

pressing it tight

like I was born wearing it.

They script my lines

before I open my mouth,

then act surprised

when I tear the page in half.

I am not their shorthand,

their shortcut,

their story told in one word.

I am the whole sky —

and they keep trying

to fold me into a box.

They carve a silhouette

and swear it’s my reflection,

never noticing

how the edges don’t fit.

I walk with the  weight

of names I never chose,

shadows I never cast,

stories I never lived.

 Still, I rise in my own outline,

soft where they expect steel,

wild where they expect calm,

true where they expect myth.

I am not the mold

they keep pressing me into.

I am the hands that break it.

Some days it feels like

the world hands me a label

before it hears my voice.

Like I’m stitched into a story

I never agreed to tell,

a character written

by someone who never met me.

But I breathe past it,

step out of the frame,

and let my truth

speak louder than their assumptions.