I am most at peace when others would break,

Floating above my body after the fall,

Calm in the car that became our home,

Finding stillness in what should destroy.


They ask who I am-as if I should know,

As if I should carry definitions like badges,

Achievements to pin to my invisible self,

Skills to make me worth the space I occupy.


I thread needles, build fences, plant gardens,

Jack of all trades, they say-yet nothing feels mine.

These hands create but the spark stays quiet,

A flame expected to warm me but doesn't.


My children-the only tether I don't question,

The single truth in this performance called life.

For them, I continue the charade of becoming,

Of bettering, striving, existing with purpose.


The world demands I declare who I am,

Expects me to stake my claim through purpose and pursuit

But I find myself most when expectations dissolve,

Most authentic when the pretending can stop.


I am the contradiction walking among you,

Most present when barely here at all,

A reluctant passenger on this spinning rock,

Finding belonging in refusing to belong.


Not sad, not broken-simply seeing through

The collective agreement to find meaning

In paths carved by those who needed them.

I walk alongside, observing, undisturbed.


Perhaps this is my place-the quiet witness,

The one who needs nothing from this world

But breath and time with those I love,

Until the day I peacefully return to nowhere.