I have been changing quietly, like the moon when no one is watching, a slow undoing of light I once thought was permanent. There are pieces of me that no longer recognize my reflection. They drift away like ash after a long-burning fire. I thought breaking meant ending. But now I see it differently, stone cracks so roots can pass through. Some nights I feel the old self pulling, like tide against shore, asking me to return to the shape I once held. But the tide never keeps the same shore for long. Something deeper has begun speaking from the darker soil of my bones, a voice that was buried beneath years of quiet survival. It does not ask me to go back. It asks me to grow. And though the path ahead is still half shadow, I feel something powerful taking its first breath inside me, not the person I was, but the one I am becoming.