The Shape Of My Soul Poem by Liz Jumah

He never cared for me—only my yield.
To him, I was function, performance, output.
He worked me like a mule, 

pushed me harder.
'Do more, ' he said.
'Be more'
And I tried—
God, I tried.

Not because I believed him, 

but because I wanted
to be worth wanting.

Yet I'm, for the record, not nonchalant.
I care—too deeply.
Conscientious to a fault.
I gasped for air—still he whispered, keep going.
I wasn't living a life—just performing one.
Scene by scene, I vanished,
becoming the self he imagined, not the one I chose.

I hated him—

the man who loved
the woman who performed, 
never the woman she was.
With his own hands, he carved a silhouette,
then fell in love with the shape—
and called it me.

He was everything I swore I wouldn't become.
Then— I saw him in the mirror. He was me.
My self-regard was like currency,
measured, earned, scored.
Like love, these days— conditional.
cold.

No one needed to enslave me.
I did it myself—beautifully.

I became my own tyrant.

And yet—
what a hollow victory, 
to gain the world
and lose yourself.

They say all the world's a stage—
but I refuse this role.
I've unlearned the script.
Let the curtain fall.

I no longer care for what I've built.
I only care to build a home—
not a stage, but a sanctuary.
Because none of it matters—
not the work, not the praise, not even the purpose—
if I cannot feel, cannot see, cannot, with these hands,
trace the shape of my soul.