Between Who I Was and Who I Am

  The mirror startled me

not because I looked different
but because I didn’t.

The girl staring back
wears my face.
I still have her eyes,
but now they hold something older.

Grief
that has already learned to stand up straight.

I pull my jacket tighter.
She does the same.

Somewhere between the storm outside
and the storm inside my ribs,
something shifts and I realize —

she is not someone I lost.
She is someone I used to be.

The rain hurls itself against the windows
like it wants to scream for me.
I don’t.

The room is untouched.
The bed still made.
Books still waiting.
Everything looks the same.

But I am not.

I hadn’t slept in days.
Grief had wrung the tears out of me
and left something hollow behind.

My body had already emptied itself,
but grief stayed —
too calm to be fear,
too clear to be madness.

She’s not coming back,
that girl who believed
everything would stay.

The thought comes gently —
not cruel,
not loud,
just certain.

Growing up does not happen slowly.
Sometimes it happens
in one night.

I whisper into the dark,
“Where did you go?”

Silence.

Then —

I am not coming back.

Lightning splits the sky.
For a second I look smaller,
younger,
afraid.

Then the light fades.

And I am still here.

The storm keeps moving.
The world does not stop.

My spine finally gives.

I curl inward,
small as I once was
before I learned
that people can leave without leaving,
that rooms can stay the same,
and that sometimes

the only thing that disappears

is the version of you
that thought it never would.

P.S: contest.