Shapeshifters

We are born with skins like poems—

unwritten, soft with truth.

But somewhere in the echo halls

of schoolyards, dinner tables,

and rooms where silence tastes like judgment,

we learn the art of shifting.

Watch:

the girl who laughs a little louder,

the boy who bites his tongue in half,

the woman who wears confidence

like a borrowed coat,

the man whose softness sleeps

under seven padlocks.

We trade our real faces

for masks that match the crowd.

Smile when it stings.

Shrink when it shines.

We become fluent in pretending—

in being almost.

A nod here, a silence there.

A laugh at the right joke.

We sculpt ourselves to fit,

whittling away what might offend

or confuse

or shine too brightly.

And underneath it all, a belief grows:

that love lives in our absence.

That to be chosen,

we must first disappear.

Be agreeable, invisible,

digestible.

But the animal beneath still stirs—

wild, wanting,

the one who knows how to run free,

howl wrong, dance strange,

or simply sit and be.

We are all shapeshifters

not because we are false,

but because we are frightened

of not being loved

as we truly are.

Still,

there comes a night

or a morning, or a moment between—

when the skin no longer fits,

and the mask begins to itch.

And we remember:

it was never about finding

the right shape to fit in—

but the courage

to stop abandoning ourselves.

To stay loyal

to what trembles within,

even when the world

asks us to disappear.

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