Zebra Seeking Spoons

Don’t fold me into someone else’s story.

Don’t pin me to a backdrop

and call it belonging.

I am not a paper doll—

not cut from safe outlines,

not held together by glue and politeness.

I crease,

I bruise,

I breathe.

There are fingerprints in my clay,

heartbeat in my edges.

I have torn and taped myself

more times than I can count,

but each repair made me thicker,

less likely to blow away.

You can’t flatten me anymore.

I am three-dimensional—

messy, warm, real.

Once, I lived along the seams—

edges trimmed to fit

someone else’s idea of gentle.

Smiles drawn on,

arms that only bent one way,

kept upright by the kindness of scissors.

I learned to hold still,

to fold instead of speak.

To look whole, even when hollow.

But paper tears easily—

and one day I did.

Now I am not neat,

not smooth,

not safe for display.

Ink runs where the rain touched me,

and somehow

that’s where I started to feel alive.

No longer paper.

Still fragile,

but mine.