Unfit

A defiant elegy for misfits made whole through chosen surrender.

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Normal is a berth they swear you’ll love

until you lie down.

Then the cutting begins.

First, your voice, sanded at the edges

so it won’t slice too sharply.

Then your hunger, shaved down

to something manageable,

an amuse-bouche to be swallowed

and promptly forgotten

when the main course arrives.

(You are never the main course.)

Your meaning is pulled into something

round and polite,

your intent ironed into obedience.

Your wildness,

tethered to a checklist

edited for brevity.

Your longing, caged beneath your ribs

until even your breath forgets

that it once stirred.

This is the Procrustean bed:

that alluring pile of softness

that promises relief—

only if you warp.

Only if you bleed politely.

Only if you call it home

and declare that these deformities

are the very definition of beauty.

But there is another frame—

one built with the weight of knowing.

It does not trim.

It honors every unruly curve,

every crooked bend,

in all its misshapen fullness.

In this frame,

presence is not a flaw

to be filed down.

It is architecture—

smoothed around your jagged border,

your wish to be seen all at once,

wounds unhealed and exposed.

Not in curated pieces, measured to size.

This frame does not bind to break,

it anchors to strengthen—

to cradle what yearns to be marked

with wide ribbons of heat

tracing silent fears.

Here, the safeword dwells,

and surrender is chosen.

And the rules?

Inked in mutual consent

and conscious devotion.

It is made to hold you, undiminished—

not a fractured form, strictly proportioned.

The you that flinched under the knife,

and said “enough”

and walked away.

You do not contort here—

you soar.

And when you fall,

it’s into hands that already know

how to hold your naked need

how to tie you down

and remake the bed

in your shape.

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