The Calendar That Never Learned My Name

The calendar hangs smug and flat, a grid of bossy squares,

Each little box is a rented cage for sanitized affairs.

It circles dates in lipstick red and calls them “must” and “should,”

as if a life could be contained by ink that thinks it’s God.

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It never learned my name, you see—just labels, plans, and goals,

birthdays, bills, appointments, and checks in neatly numbered rolls.

It knows when rent is due, not when my chest is coming loose;

It tallies steps and milestones, not the days I came unmoored.

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I used to let its rectangles arrange my breath in rows,

to tuck my joy in margins small where no one ever goes.

I penciled in my breakdowns as “reschedule” or “delay,”

erasing tears like typos I’d correct some other day.

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The calendar spoke fluent now but never learned my why,

demanding I be sunshine on a week built out of ice.

It shouted “Happy New!” in fonts that glittered over grey,

while I was still dismantling the ghosts of yesterday.

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Each Monday wore a necktie made of caffeinated dread,

Each Friday dangled freedom like a treat for working dead.

The weekends were a bargain bin for dreams I couldn’t fit—

two clearance-tagged, exhausted days to maybe feel like “it.”

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One night I heard the pages sigh, the staples creak with weight,

The months like fragile vertebrae that couldn’t stand the hate.

I realized time itself was not the tyrant in the room—

just this cheap paper monarch on my landlord’s plastic hook.

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So I uncapped a softer pen and wrote along the side,

not meetings, but the tiny truths I never let collide:

“Today I fed the plants on time.” “I answered my own call.”

“I did not disappear on me when I began to fall.”

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I drew a star beside the day I said a gentle “no,”

A quiet crown for choosing rest instead of one more show.

I scribbled hearts on mornings when I woke without a war,

and arrows for the afternoons I dared to leave my door.

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The calendar looked crowded then—less tidy, more like me,

with constellations in the cracks where chores used to decree.

Box by box I claimed the space beneath the shrill demands,

turned deadlines into stepping stones my own unhurried hands.

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Come spring, I taped a second sheet beside the old machine

a lawless page for moments that could never stay between:

The laughter in the checkout line, the call I almost missed,

The day I walked the long way home and let my anger mist.

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The calendar still keeps its job—alerts and “don’t forgets”—

But now it shares the wall with proof of unreported breaths.

It might not know my name yet, but it’s learning how I live:

Not just in rows of obligation, but in all the hours I forgive.

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And when this year grows tired, I will not toss it whole—

I’ll tear the months to salvage stars that helped me save my soul.

For once, the story next to dates will matter more than when,

and I’ll hang up the next blank grid already holding my own pen.