PROSE – REFLECTION

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The light crept in, not with purpose, but inevitability. It pooled over the floorboards in pale streaks, slipped across the rumpled sheets, and found her where she sat—curled in on herself at the edge of the bed like something unfinished. The curtain shifted with a lazy sigh, stirred by the hum of a world already moving without her.

She didn’t move. Just blinked slowly, eyes still heavy. Her hair was a mess—coiled and wild, clinging to the nape of her neck with sweat. The air felt thick, damp from last night’s rain, and carried a faint trace of coffee drifting in from the apartment next door. It reminded her she wasn’t entirely alone in the world—just sealed off from it.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She didn’t look. She already knew the message: “You okay? You were pretty quiet last night.”

She had gone to that rooftop gathering. Smiled on cue. Nodded politely as someone explained a startup idea for the third time. But when the conversation shifted to politics, to “people being too sensitive,” to jokes with teeth she wasn’t supposed to flinch at—she had gone quiet. Not out of agreement. Out of calculation.

It wasn’t fear of confrontation. It was exhaustion.

The kind that seeps into your bones when you’ve spent years editing yourself in real time.

Why can’t you just be easier?

The voice came sharp, cutting through the fog. Familiar. Not hers exactly—but forged in her. It spoke in the tone of her third-grade teacher, the one who called her “bossy” for speaking with certainty. The one who wrote on her report card, “bright, but disruptive.” That was the first time she learned that being loud and being wrong were seen as the same thing.

She had been shrinking ever since. A slow erosion.

And now, this morning, she felt caught between the shrinking and the wanting—wanting to take up space and fearing the cost of it.

You think you’re different? That the rules don’t apply to you?

She flexed her jaw, let the thought sit. The worst part of that voice was how reasonable it sounded. How it wrapped itself in concern. In survival.

Outside the window, a billboard stood tall above the bus stop: a model in spotless white jeans and a tagline in all caps—LIVE YOUR TRUTH™. She almost laughed. As if truth came clean and neatly styled.

Her own truth felt messy. Unmarketable. Like morning breath and ragged nails and questions without answers.

She looked at her hands—real, rough, hers. Last night she had come home and typed a long apology to the group chat. “Sorry I was off. Just tired. Hope I didn’t kill the vibe.”

She hovered over the send button.

Then she didn’t.

Now, she picked up the phone, screen still glowing with the unsent draft. She tapped and held. Delete.

It wasn’t a revolution. Just refusal.

A small, quiet defiance.

She wasn’t whole. There were still bruises beneath her calm, still doubts threading her thoughts. But she was done apologizing for needing more than performance.

The light had shifted again, stronger now. Not demanding. Just there.

She wasn’t sure what came next.

But this—this stillness, this pause, this decision not to disappear—was a start.