Zebra Seeking Spoons

I held a script I knew by heart,
creased at the corners from years of dreaming—
a future carefully outlined
in ink and expectation.

I knew the chapters I wanted:
the places I’d go,
the mountains I’d climb,
the life I thought my body
and I would walk into together.

Then chronic illness arrived
without knocking,
like a storm with cruel hands,
ripping pages from the binding,
scattering plans into the wind.

I stood in the wreckage,
holding torn pieces of myself,
mourning words I never got to finish,
grieving chapters
that ended before they ever began.

Because grief lives here too—
in canceled plans,
in changed dreams,
in the quiet ache
of recognizing a life
you no longer get to live.

For a while,
I thought the story was over.
Thought a shattered plot
meant a ruined ending.

But stories are strange things.

Sometimes they survive the fire.
Sometimes they change their shape.
Sometimes the most beautiful chapters
are the ones we never would have chosen,
the ones written with trembling hands
and stubborn hope.

So now I write differently.

I write in pencil instead of ink.
I write around pain and through exhaustion.
I write softer dreams,
new dreams,
dreams that make room
for rest and resilience.

And no—
this is not the story I planned.

But I am still here.
Still turning pages.
Still holding the pen.

And maybe that means
the story was never destroyed at all.

Maybe it was simply waiting
for me to discover
that even after everything is torn apart,
a life can still be rewritten—
and still become beautiful.