Arion Wallen, contributor
They look at me with quiet eyes,
Their silence thick as stone.
I see the weight behind their gaze—
The wish I’d not outgrown.
Their love is knotted into rules,
Old prayers and untold fears.
They speak in sighs, in sideways glances,
In half-remembered years.
I used to fit so easily,
A branch from their own tree—
But now I twist against the grain,
And break too easily.
They call it change, but say it cold,
Like change is something wrong—
A fault line running through my voice,
A fracture in my song.
I try to fold myself in half
To fit the mold again,
But every time I bend too far,
I splinter from the strain.
They say I’m not the one they knew,
That something’s gone astray—
And I can feel their grieving eyes
Each time I look away.
But still, I hold that grief like glass,
So fragile in my hand,
And wonder if there’s any way
They’d ever understand.
I want to be a better shape,
A name they’d speak with pride—
But don’t know where that journey starts,
Or what I am inside.
I trace my shadow on the floor
And don’t know who I’ve drawn.
The face I see is partly theirs—
The rest I built alone.
Between two names, between two selves,
I float without a shore.
I miss the child they used to love—
I’m not that child anymore.
But even as I drift apart,
Some tether holds me near.
I long to change, I truly do—
I just don’t know what to fear.
Because to change might break me more,
And leave me less than whole—
A stranger shaped by wanting love,
But losing sight of soul.
So if they see a storm in me,
And not the soft, small spark—
Just know I’m searching for the light,
And stumbling in the dark.
