My face became a sunlight zone with flowers known and unknown. I’ve become my own path, blooming with brambles and vines. The candle’s an easel, and the flame, a canvas. The rain across my eyes feels like it could fill the Atlantic but made breaking ground easier. Relatives told my mom to end gestation; tectonic plates slipping under familial weight. My older cousin said: you always seem deep in thought. If only she could meet the former versions of myself I’ve fought. Mom and her girlfriend, [REDACTED], drank and played cards in the kitchen. Dad took odd jobs and randomly brought me with him. Soon, I was too far gone. My childhood was spent compartmentalizing events I somehow survived. Years later, before I became unhoused, I visited a Zen monastery. A nun led us in chanting: I’m letting go, I’m letting go, I’m letting go. The levees flooded; I grasped who I was and wasn’t. The fortress, built by my own hands, had to be razed.