Ashes Of Me

I carved a mirror from the night,

polished it with every flaw 
I tried to hide.


It showed me bones I'd borrowed,

names I'd wear like masks,

and the quiet truth,

I buried beneath borrowed light.

Progress is a funeral of my old self,
I light the pyre,

watching the false skin blister and curl,
collapsing into embers
,
that whisper who I used to be.

In the smoke,
I choke on shadows,

that once felt like home.


I inhale them anyway,

let them stain my lungs,

until I recognize the taste

of the person I feared to become.

In the dark,
I found the versions of me
that never learned to die.

Circling like starving wolves,
wearing my old smiles
as if they were trophies.

Every step forward drags a ghost,

every lesson draws blood.


Self-discovery is dissection,
and I am both the surgeon
and the corpse.

Yet somewhere in the wounds,

a pulse returns slow and stubborn,

but mine.

I rise from my own ruin,

not clean,
not redeemed,

but aware.

The darkness that shaped me,

now walks beside me,

no longer a monster,

but a mirror I finally learned to face.

Self-improvement is a ritual,
and I am its latest creature.