you tear the wall of the chalkboard, you tear the fingers off the cutting board and the screeching sound once in your head stops. you want to laugh. you are cold. you are quiet, but you never understand why you are always told otherwise. you’re just you. a body filled with bits and pieces you have rejected from day one, since they were introduced. you are just you, you tell yourself. sometimes, it’s not enough.
you, named after the universe that stands before, from you, at your very fingertips—you tell him you feel nothing. you don’t feel the star’s burst and the nebula’s birth, you don’t feel like the whole sum of perfect parts you should be.
“stand,” you hear, and you tell every inch of being in yourself to freeze and disobey. instead, you do as commanded because of the punishments and the foretelling danger that you have learned, that have been instilled deep in your heart, as much as you loathe the feeling that comes with obedience and the backhanded praise that sickens you and—
and you stand, because what else is it, that you can do? you are not the noble cause that was born; you are not the one to be worshipped, the girl that stands alone, unafraid. no, you stand alone and afraid. you stand wounded, you stand punished as every inch of your skin is ripped off, piece by piece, and replaced with deadened metal. you are not the beginning, you are not the dust from the universe’s frail explosion reborn. no, you are the one that stands, bleeding, as she whips the others into submission, only following suit after your misguided dedication and loyalty. you are the one that takes the world by storm as it was commanded because you, darling, forge your future into the one you so dearly seek. you are not the star. instead, you are the starshaper.
