What No Mirror Can Name

What No Mirror Can Name

I stand in the soft divide
where shadow begins to loosen its hold,
and for the first time
I see the outline of who I might become—
not yet formed, but calling.

I’ve learned the world is full of mirrors—
people, seasons, losses, praises—
each one saying this is you,
each one certain of its truth.

Some will sanctify you.
Some will condemn you.
Some will shrink you to a single failing,
or raise you onto pedestals
too fragile to bear your weight.

So often, the names others give me
belong more to their story than mine.

If I am not vigilant,
their versions of me become my own—
saint or sinner,
hero or villain,
a shape carved from someone else’s need.

So I pause,
letting silence do its slow work,
and ask inwardly, without fear:

Who am I when no one is naming me?
What remains when every borrowed truth dissolves?
Can I stay with myself long enough
to see past the masks
I once wore to survive?

The answers rise slowly.
Truth always does.
It lives beneath habit and history,
beneath the noise of expectation.

To reach it,
I must forge myself deliberately—
heat my being in honesty,
hammer it against old narratives,
sharpen it on the edge of courage
until the blade rings true.

For if I do not define myself,
others will—
with their hopes, their wounds,
their fears, their fantasies.

And I will become a character
in someone else’s tale
instead of the artist
of my own making.

Peace is not found
in the reflections they offer.
Peace lives only in the self
I am brave enough to shape—
the one stepping forward now,
the one answering the call,
the one I am finally ready
to meet.