A SINGULAR PERSON.

I am not a sum of parts, not a list, not a tally or an aim.

Not the color of my skin or the weight of my name,

not the country that birthed me, not the accent on my tongue,

not a movement, not a side, not a war to be won.

I am just me. A singular person. 🧍🏾‍♀️

*

I breathe, I think, I wake up and feel the sun like everyone around me,

I choose my steps not by the boxes drawn to confound me,

but by the pulse of what it means to bound to the ground that surround me.

*

And yet, they demand a definition,

a box, a label, a fixed position.

Building layers of contradiction

as if to be known is to be categorized,

as if to be seen is to be analyzed.

They say, face the parts of you you’ve hidden,

but they mean, become the version we’ve written.

As if to exist freely is to betray something.

*

Be your history, be your struggle, be your pain—

wear it like a second skin, don’t let it wane.

Be a woman and rage, be Black and grieve,

be an immigrant and bow, be neurodivergent and fight,

as if I must always carry war inside my sleeve.

*

But before all that, I was just here.

Before my name was attached to meaning,

before my hands were marked by leaning…

into effort, into striving, into roles I never chose,

before my life became a list of things I should stand for,

I was simply breathing, simply being, I suppose.

*

The world is obsessed with stories of success,

as if to exist is not enough,

as if a person is only as valuable as their list of achievements on the wall.

“Oh, she’s a doctor,” they say,

“Oh, she’s brilliant,” they say,

“Oh, she’s accomplished,” they say,

“Oh, she’s a wife,” they say,

“Oh, she’s a mother,” they say—

but who is she?

Suddenly something’s stuck in their airway.

Who is she, really, when their praise drifts away?

*

Does she laugh when she’s all alone?

Does she dance when no one’s home?

Does she stand beneath the rain

and feel it cleanse away the strain?

*

I do not want to be a collection of titles.

I do not want my worth measured by the grind, or the hustle,

by how well I perform in a world that demands motion.

I do not want to be reduced to origin or emotion,

or my triumphs and my failures.

I JUST WANT TO BE.

*

And when the world is loud with expectations,

when it shouts at me to choose a station,

to live by a script already written for me,

I will sit in the quiet and listen inwardly.

I will not let them bind me to a past that does not hold me,

or a future that is not promised or told me.

I will not chase meaning in a way that folds me.

*

Before I am Black, before I am a woman,

before I am a name you can tie to a nation,

I am a person. A singular person.

*

So take this lesson:

we all are nothing

but who we are—as an individual person.

Marvelous not because of what we’ve done,

but because we are one.

And that is enough.

*

I do not carry the weight of expectation

just because the world has learned

to sort people like files in a cabinet’s rotation.