The Cost of Becoming

I thought the leaving would happen all at once

A single storm, a wave that crests and breaks

And leaves behind a smooth, new shoreline

Where only the brave remain.

 

But loss has patience.

It lingers in empty chairs at family gatherings,

In holiday cards that never come,

In the sudden cold of a friend’s silence.

 

The price is more than paperwork

Though there are days when my name is a line item

On some bureaucrat’s form,

My identity contingent on stamps and signatures,

A scavenger hunt through offices and websites

For the right letter, the right code,

Proof that I belong to myself.

 

It is the ache of every sideways glance,

The stinging echo of a once-loving voice

Turned sharp or silent.

It is waiting on hold, listening to bad music,

Rehearsing explanations for the hundredth time,

Trying to convince a stranger

That my happiness is not a clerical error.

 

Yet, beneath the pile of rejections,

Underneath the smudged ink of every “no,”

There is still something blooming

Not hope, exactly, but the bone-deep certainty

That I am more myself in pain

Than I ever was in hiding.

 

I would not trade the color I have found

For the comfort of old illusions.

Even when the world turns cold,

There is warmth in my own name,

And the soft, surprising joy

Of those who choose to stay.

 

So I carry the cost, some days with grace,

Some days with nothing but stubbornness

Because becoming is its own kind of faith,

A daily resurrection

Paid for in pieces of who I used to be.