Haiku Money flirt with me, touch-and-go, never staying I sleep with “almost.”

Prompt 3 2022/2023 “Unfit for Their Version of Me” I remember the shift not loud, not dramatic, just a quiet turning in me that said, there has to be more than this. I spoke it out loud like something fragile this new path, this becoming, this version of me I hadn’t fully met yet. And they looked at me… like I didn’t fit the sentence. Their words didn’t shout they weighed. Heavy with comparison, laced with doubt, dressed up as concern, but cutting all the same. “Be realistic.” “People like you don’t—” “Why not just stay where you’re good?” And just like that, I shrunk. Started measuring myself against versions of others that were never mine to carry. Felt small in rooms that once felt like home.Questioned a calling. I hadn’t even had time to understand. It wasn’t just rejection, it was erasure. Like they needed me to stay familiar so they could stay comfortable. And for a moment I almost did. Almost folded my dreams into something acceptable. Almost traded my becoming for their approval. But something in me—God, something in me—refused to die quietly. A whisper, barely there, but steady: you are not unfit, you are just unfamiliar to them. That’s when I stopped asking for permission from people who only knew my past. Stopped letting comparison rename me. Now I walk different, not louder, not perfect, but rooted. Because I learned the hard way, being rejected by those who misunderstand you is not failure… it’s often the first sign you’re finally becoming who you were meant to be.

Prompt 3 04/2003 Title: The Truth That Broke Me Open I woke up inside a body that didn’t feel like mine, memory fractured, night still clinging to my skin like something that refused to confess. Truth didn’t come gently. It didn’t knock. It dragged itself in loud, breathless, uninvited. I learned what happened in pieces I didn’t ask for, in silence that screamed louder than anything I could say. And then, another truth grew inside me. Not love. Not choice. Just consequence wearing a heartbeat. I remember sitting with it, hands trembling between life and loss, praying to a God. I hadn’t fully returned to yet; “Do you still hear me, after everything I’ve done?” Because truth doesn’t just expose what was done to you it reveals what you do after. I chose to end what had begun in violence, but that didn’t end the war inside me. I carried guilt like it was mine to deserve. Carried shame like it had my name on it. Until I realized truth had another layer. I survived. And survival doesn’t always look holy at first. Sometimes it looks like broken decisions, tear-stained prayers, and a woman trying to find herself in the aftermath. I gave myself back to God with shaking hands— not clean, not whole, but willing. And He didn’t ask me to explain my pain. He just stayed. That was the truth that changed me. Not that I was hurt. Not that I made a choice that still aches, but that even in all of it, I was never abandoned. Still healing. Still hurting. Still held.

@Michelle Cox

@Michelle Cox

@Stephanie Burnett

@Antwion Shamar

@Antwion Shamar Nice🫰🏾✍🏾