The Bottom Shelf Review

eleutheromania

the mirror doesn’t hesitate.
it names me before i can interrupt,
like it knows exactly how long it takes
for doubt to form
and chooses to speak first.
no blur, no kindness of angles,
no almost i can hide inside –
just a body it recognizes instantly,
a biometric scanner that never glitches,
and a word for it
i have never been able to make mine.

i used to try and catch it slipping.
stand there longer than i should,
tilt my chin, pull my shoulders back,
hold myself like something closer to him –
like if i got the posture right
the rest would follow.
like i could rehearse my way
into being seen correctly.
i stayed until my eyes blurred,
until my face stopped looking like anything at all –
and even then,

it didn’t change.
it just waited
for me to give up first.

and i did.

now i pass it like it’s nothing,
like it doesn’t pull at something under my ribs
every time i accidentally look too long
and have to watch recognition happen
in the wrong direction.
because that’s the worst part –
not that it’s wrong,
but that it’s certain.

clothes don’t help.
they map me out in careful, deliberate lines,
trace every place i wish would disappear,
cling where i need space,
leave space where i need weight.
a blueprint drawn wrong.
a house with mislabeled rooms.
i still adjust them –
small, repetitive corrections,
like if i keep trying
it might eventually count for something.
it never does.
but i keep doing it anyway,
like i don’t know how to stop.

my name fits
until someone else touches it.
in my head, it settles clean –
something solid, something i don’t have to question.
out loud, it falters;
gets reshaped, replaced,
or dropped entirely for something heavier,
something that lands in my chest
like a hand pushing me back
into a version of myself
i thought i’d already left behind.

there are moments,
brief, fragile, almost imaginary,
where i get it right.
from a distance, in bad lighting,
in passing, without context –
someone sees him.
and for a second,
it’s effortless.
no explaining, no correcting,
no careful positioning of my own existence
to make it easier for them to understand.

just… right.

and then it breaks.
always.
the moment i speak,
the moment i stay,
the moment the world looks again
and decides it made a mistake.

i’ve learned not to hold onto those seconds.
they bruise.
they make everything else sharper,
harder to ignore,
harder to flatten into something i can carry

without thinking about it too much.

so i keep moving.
eyes down, voice steady,
avoiding anything reflective enough
to argue back.
because stillness –
stillness is where it catches up.

in the pause before i speak,
when i have to choose
which version of my voice will hurt less.
in the space where my name should sit
and doesn’t.
in the quiet understanding
that being seen
and being known
are two completely different things,
and i am very good
at being neither.

sometimes there’s a thought –
not loud, not urgent,
just steady –
that there’s a way to make it all stop;
not fix it,
not change it,
just end the constant correction,
the effort of holding something that refuses
to stay in place.
like letting go
of something you were never meant to carry
this long.

i don’t follow it.
i don’t push it away.
i just let it exist,
like everything else –
quiet, persistent,
waiting to see what i’ll do with it.

and the ache –
it learns.
it softens, settles,
threads itself through everything
until it feels less like pain
and more like something permanent.
something factual.

something i stop questioning.

the mirror doesn’t hesitate.
it never has.
and now –
now i don’t either.
i let it call me what it wants;
let the word settle;
let it stay there
unchallenged,
because correcting it
would mean believing
there’s still something left
worth correcting.

an ode to the semicolon

you arrive where breath forgets itself;
where a sentence leans too far forward
and nearly falls.
you place a hand there, quietly,
and say, not yet.

you are the art of suspension,
a held note in the throat of language,
a pause that feels like standing
on the edge of something unnamed,
looking down, then closing your eyes.

the reader meets you and hesitates –
not confused, but stilled,
as if something beneath the text
has asked them to wait
one heartbeat longer.

a period would be simpler;
clean, decisive, final.
but you choose the harder mercy –
to leave the door unlatched,
to let the sentence reconsider itself.

what else could hold a moment like this?
what else could interrupt without ending?
stay.
wait.
don’t close the door yet.

you live in that narrow place
where stopping and ending almost touch,
where silence gathers weight
but hasn’t learned how to fall.

and still, you interrupt –
not loudly, not enough to fix the ache,
but enough to shift it,
to turn an ending into a pause,
to remind the line
it’s allowed to continue.

;

despite everything, it’s still you

i learned early how to disappear politely,
to fold my voice into something small and acceptable.
to stand shaped like a question
in rooms that only respected certainty.

inside, there was a boy pacing –
he counted ribs like locked doors,
memorizing exits in a house
he was told was himself.

some nights, the dark felt instructional,
like a room teaching me subtraction,
showing me how to quiet everything
until even my shadow forgot its shape.

i kept a pocket of almosts:
almost reaching out, almost staying,
almost believing the morning
wasn’t just another obligation.

the mirror was a shoreline i kept leaving,
each reflection pulled further out,
tides dragging versions of me
i couldn’t hold onto,
until i couldn’t tell if i was drowning
or just learning how to vanish slowly.

but still –
he paced.
footsteps soft, insistent,
like he was walking toward a door
i hadn’t found yet.
i didn’t become him.
i dug him out, shaking,
hands full of dirt and something stubborn,
something that refused to stay buried.

now i take up space like it’s unfamiliar,
like breath is something i’m still earning.
but it’s mine,

and i am still here.