You wake before dawn, throat raw from dreams that tasted like smoke and applause, half-guilty you enjoyed the flames. The sky is still drunk on stars when the crows start circling the backyard—sentinels that never bought the lie that ‘no one’s watching.’ You step outside barefoot, damp grass shocking your nervous system awake, and you feel them clock the way you walk, the way you clutch the bundle you came to bury. The bundle is light but feels like iron: half-written confessions, promises abandoned at the first sign of success, the shiny costumes you stitched to survive every stage you never asked to stand on.
You dig with your hands because tools would make it too clean. Dirt packs beneath your nails, and that sting is proof you’re still here. You remember every time you’ve burned down your own momentum—how you built an empire overnight, then ghosted before the ribbon cutting, blaming fate for locking the door you yourself slammed shut. You remember carrying people across rivers they never asked to cross, then snarling when they couldn’t read your exhaustion. You remember pinning perfection to the cork board until the blood drained from the work and called it “standards.” You taste the word martyr on your tongue; it’s bitter, metallic, addictive.
The hole is shallow—just deep enough for ceremony. You lay the bundle in, whisper a quick obituary for the masks, and cover it with earth. The crows settle on the fence, silent, as if waiting for the next move. For a second fear tries to jerk you back into old choreography: build another persona, polish another excuse. Instead you inhale, let the cold morning air fill the empty spaces you’ve always stuffed with noise. Something cracks open behind your ribs, a door that’s been nailed shut since childhood when being seen meant punishment or pity. You stay with the ache, you don’t flinch this time, and the crows tilt their heads as though approving the posture.
A sudden clarity arrives—not the blinding white-light kind, but the slow dawn that reveals everything exactly as it is. You realize the real work isn’t burying the past; it’s building a body that can hold the weight of what’s next. So you ground your heels, feel the pulse in your arches, whisper the words you’ve never dared to say out loud: I belong here without performance. The ground seems to breathe back. The crows lift off in perfect sync, black feathers scribbling new lines across the canvas of sky, and you finally understand: their watchfulness was never judgment; it was invitation.
You walk inside smeared with soil, unafraid of the mess tracing your path. At the kitchen table you open a blank notebook—no titles, no outlines, just wide open space—and write the thing you’re scared to want: a life shaped by desire, not survival. The script feels raw, shaky, alive. Every line lands in your chest like steady drumbeats, regulating a heart that once raced only for the fight. Outside, daylight grows honest, unfiltered. Inside, you feel something even rarer: the first quiet flicker of sovereignty, steady enough to burn but not consume. The day hasn’t officially begun, yet for the first time you’re not bracing for collapse. You’re ready to be seen, unedited, uncaged—and the story is only just breathing its first word. Rise Up.
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