…listen, i am more than this, more than the thin stories that others have allowed me—stories that stink of desperation, of dark passages, of no light, of places that taste like fear, that sound like desperate attempts to escape their own pain.

the lives that others would force upon me are not mine for the taking because i refuse to pick them up, and i will not make them my home.

listen, i am more than any of this.

i take back my undying obedience to the stories i were given by bodies who have forgotten how to write their own lives without a villain in it, bodies who only know their own hunger, who don’t know how to walk the spine of their lives with hope and dignity, who cannot witness another soft body choosing to walk towards the bottom of the field, towards the gate, to where the sparrows flit freely in the hedgerows, to where freedom lies, towards all the places they do not dare to travel.

i choose the Light, to be tucked under its wing, to be forever someone different, to have once-upon-a-time been one way, and to now, be another.

i choose to never return to where my feet were caught in chains.

—how to close doors

© Liezel Graham 2025

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words from my night pages.

have a peaceful Sabbath, lovely souls,

liezel