She Isn’t Poetry

The mirror reflected a stranger, Not the one she’d spent years building, the ones with carefully crafted personas and polished edges, but something raw, unfiltered. Her hair was a mess, a wild bird’s nest defying gravity. Her eyes, usually bright and sparkling, were dull, reflecting a weariness that seeped into her bones.

She’d always wanted to be poetry. Flowing, graceful, every word a carefully chosen gem. But life, it seemed, had other plans. It was a messy, chaotic, unrehearsed performance, filled with stumbles, missteps, and moments of sheer panic.

The poem’s words echoed in her mind: “People are not poetry.” And she realized, with a sudden clarity, that it wasn’t a criticism, but a liberation. She wasn’t meant to be a sonnet, a haiku, a perfectly structured ode. She was a symphony, a whirlwind of emotions, a chaotic explosion of colors. She was a story, unfinished and ever evolving.

The pressure to fit into a neat little box, to conform to the expectations of others, began to crumble. She could be messy, she could stumble and fall. And that was okay. She could be herself.

A wave of relief washed over her. It was okay to be rough around the edges, to be bruised and scarred. It was okay to not have all the answers, to not know where she was going.

She looked at her reflection again, not with disdain, but with a newfound acceptance. She was a work in progress, a story still being written. And that, she realized, was beautiful.

She wasn’t poetry. She was something more. She was human.

And that was enough.