Soft Mirrors: The Quiet Shape of Becoming

It began with a touch. Not heat, not gentleness— just a recognition, like meeting a thought you didn’t know was yours.

I believed. Not in god. Not in truth. But in the feeling that swept in quietly, like a second heartbeat. It didn’t shout. It changed me anyway.

I tried to name it. Is it breath? Is it the scratch of pen on paper, or the ache in my spine as I sit too long in a body I’m still learning to live in?

Maybe it was the moment I stopped asking, Who am I? and began asking, Who are we? You. Them. The shadow-self. The voice that didn’t belong to me, but always spoke in my dreams.

Sexuality swirled in— not as desire, but as mirror. A flicker of me reflected in someone else’s want. A silhouette standing half in truth, half in myth.

I ached. Not for answers— but for the ache itself. Because the ache meant I was still here. Still questioning. Still cracking open.

Living didn’t arrive like thunder. It came in layers. Like wet paint. Drying slowly. One skin over another. One self over another. Not easy. Not hard. Just inevitable.

We vanish to write. We write to vanish. Somewhere in that paradox I found myself.

A shape in the fog. Not solid. But becoming.