I didn’t ask to be here.

  I didn’t choose this breath,

  this name,

  this body I’m expected to inhabit like a home.

  I didn’t sign any contract

  that said I wanted to feel

  or break

  or hope

  or keep stitching myself together

  every time the world pulled me apart.

  I just arrived—

  dropped into a life mid-sentence,

  buried in expectations

  I never agreed to carry.

  Everyone talks about gratitude

  like it’s mandatory,

  like I should be thankful

  for a heartbeat I never requested,

  for a map I didn’t draw,

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  for a world that feels too sharp

  against skin that’s always been too soft.

  Some days I move through rooms

  like a tenant in someone else’s house—

  touching nothing,

  belonging nowhere,

  trying not to wake the ghosts

  that seem more at home than I am.

  Existing feels like a debt

  I don’t remember owing.

  Every sunrise arrives

  like another reminder

  that the universe volunteered me

  for a life I didn’t interview for.

  But still—

  I get up.

  I move.

  I breathe.

  Not because I chose this,

  but because I’m here

  and I haven’t figured out

  what else to do with that truth.

  Maybe that’s its own rebellion:

  to stay in a world

  I never wanted,

  to shape it slowly

  with hands that tremble,

  to carve out a space

  where the unwanted parts of me

  are finally allowed to exist

  without apology.

  I didn’t choose to be born.

  But if I have to be here,

  then let me be here honestly—

  unwilling,

  unpolished,

  uninvited,

  but still

  somehow

  impossibly

  alive.