she was born this way—
her gaze fixed like a star,
and once it found its orbit,
it never left.
then life happened,
tide after tide.
she kept telling herself,
i am as unchangeable as the stars,
as untouchable as the wind.
she stood at the shore
with an ocean behind her ribs,
its salt rising in her throat,
its waves breaking against her bones.
she gathered shells from the wet sand,
lifting each one
like a piece of herself
the tide had returned.
sand clung beneath her nails,
filled the seams of her palms,
followed her home.
she was never free of it,
but she kept it—
the grit, the weight, the fragments—
like the faults she had learned to own.
every scar she wears is a shell
the ocean could not swallow,
a medallion carved by salt and time,
a bright mark left by survival.
beneath the same unchanging stars,
she carries her wreckage like treasure—
still standing,
still shining,
still a holder of glory.