I built myself from borrowed clay,
molded tight so none could stray.
Each seam was stitched in fearful thread,
a life dictated, plans unread.

But beneath the mask, embers burned,
a quiet heat, a lesson learned.
The kindling grew, the spark took hold,
the cracks spread wide, the lies unrolled.

No longer bound by borrowed skin,
I step into the fire within.
Not a crisis, not despair—
but a rebirth, bold and rare.

The fire takes, the fire rends,
it does not wait, it does not bend.
It sears the past into my skin—
must I burn to begin again?

Like a phoenix, I will rise again,
not untouched, not unscarred—
but shaped by flame, by ash, by all I’ve lost,
carved into something meant to last.

—T.A.