Definition is a coffin, polished and precise, built to contain something that was never meant to be still. We press ourselves into its corners, into the words others have given us—daughter, lover, failure, dreamer—until the shape of us is lost beneath the weight of their meaning. But meanings rot, don’t they? They decay like fruit left too long in the sun, sweet at first, then sour, then gone. And what is left? A body unclaimed by language, shifting, slipping through the cracks of expectation.
There is a cruelty in being known, in being named. A name is a brand, seared into the skin, a promise you never agreed to make. They say you are this, so you must be this. They say you are that, so you cannot be anything else. But there is a rebellion in silence, in refusing to give yourself away, in holding your shape loosely enough that no one can grasp it. To be nothing is to be untouchable. To be nothing is to be free.
Yet, we ache to be seen. To have someone look at us and say, there you are, without turning us into something small enough to hold. But if they name you, they claim you. If they define you, they own you. So you swallow your longing, tuck it into the hollow of your ribs, and let yourself become wind, become water, become whatever the world cannot catch.
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