You will change

Like how the moon forgets its name each morning

And still rises again

You will change

And call it surviving

Call it mother

Call it the first boy

Who said your name without wanting to fix it

Some nights the body is just a hallway

You walk through to get back to yourself

And just when your hands learn the shape of staying

Another leaving, soft as a match going out in the rain

You will change

Not like the seasons

That would be too kind, but like a name

Forced from the mouth of someone who’s forgotten

How to love you

You’ll say

This is the last time

But your voice a door

Unhinged on memory keeps opening into smaller light

You will change

Because you had to

Because you are a fatherless boy who is now a father to himself

Because the world will press its knees on your neck

And call it mercy

And just as you begin to wear the scar like a song

Just as you begin to reconcile with your own grief

Just as you learn to walk without apologising

For owning your shadow

The world turns again

Asks you to bleed different

Softer

Quieter

Still, you’ll love the ache

Because it means you’re not done becoming

Darling, listen

You will change

And sometimes while you get used to that change

You realize a new change is coming again

But every change is not a loss

Every breaking is not a betrayal

Your becoming is a kind of defiance

A refusal to stay as the world would dictate you

Small

Silent

Saved

Still, you must go on changing

Changing and changing and changing again

Because that is the only constant as saint Octavia has it

And only then

Would you find in the trembling yourself

Not whole

Not healed

But here