Facts About Me Poem by Byantuyo Rahim

i am 17 yet the weight of time feels heavier than my years, i love the water -swimming is the only place i feel weightless
Where thoughts and fears drown,
And i can breath in a world where nothing weighs me down,
i talk a lot,
because silence makes me feel like
i am suffocating in my own mind. i speak in emotions;
A sucker for words that feel to much
And for a girl with a beautiful smile that could light up a whole room,
and her eyes - there is something about the way they see the world,
like they understand me in ways no one else can

i fear the dark
not because of the shadows
but because of the things i cant see
the unknown lurking beneath the
surface of my thoughts, and in
relationships. it's the same
I'm afraid of what lies hidden of giving
pieces to myself and finding out it was never enough
I'm scared of trusting somebody only to be left in the dark

i grew up in a village where earth felt harder than my dreams
where school was a struggle, A poor classroom filled with hopes louder than the walls
a place where i learned the weight of surviving
but not the ease of living

my parents' love felt like a battlefield,
i watched them fight
and learned that sometimes love doesn't look like what they told us in stories
sometimes it looks like silence
like distance
like broken promises hanging in the air
and i fear that, my heart might repeat their mistakes

i wear glasses to see clearer
but sometimes the more i see,
the more confused i become
i look through lenses
trying to make sense of things i still
don't understand like love
like heart break, like the way my
heart still aches for someone i
thought would stay

my birthday is a reminder that
i am still growing
still learning
still trying to find the right balance
between who i am and who i want to be

but in all this i know one thing for sure
I'm still here
still swimming through my own waves
still speaking my truth
still figuring it out
one day at a time