Mirror Mirror

I wake,
and the mirror greets me with the weight of a thousand judgments.
I don't remember asking for its opinion,
yet it speaks—
with eyes that trace lines like they’re scars,
not paths of a journey I've survived.

Each fold, each curve,
I feel them like the echo of a sigh,
like the whispers of a world that forgot
that bodies are not just skin and bone—
they are stories,
not meant to be perfect but to be lived.

I touch my belly—
soft, round, a testament to the laughter and the hunger,
the days I was alive and the nights I thought I might not make it,
and I think:
Who are you to decide what I should be?
This body, this flesh,
it carries my soul through storms,
through heartbreaks,
through all the moments I feared I wouldn't make it out of.

But I have.
And that’s something worth more than the size of a dress,
the measure of a waist,
the angle of a jaw.

I am not my reflection.
I am the feeling of breathing when it hurts,
the sound of my heartbeat when I’ve had enough,
the truth of a body that has loved,
that has broken,
that has healed,
and that will keep going.