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 one leaving

Soft as a match going out in the rain

 

You will change

Not like the seasons, ha

That would be too kind, but like a name

Forged from the mouth of someone

Who has forgotten 

How to love you

 

You will 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 this world is on fire

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

Because this 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 what you own 

Your shadow included

The world turn again

Asks you to bleed different

Softer

Quieter

 

Still, you will love the ache

Because it means you are not done becoming

 

Darling, listen

You will change

And sometimes while you get used to that change

You realize a newer change is brewing again

 

But every change is not a loss

Every breaking is not betrayal

Your becoming is a kind of defiance

A refusal to stay as the world would dictate you

Small 

Silent

Saved

 

Still, you just go on changing

Changing and changing and changing and changing again

Because that is the only constant as saint Octavia E Butler has it

 

And only then

Would you find in the trembling 

Yourself

Not whole

Not healed

But here