All the Things I Am

I am not one thing.
I am not just the woman who survived,

or the woman who fell apart,

or the woman who loved men

with broken hinges

and weather warnings stitched into their sleeves.
I am not just the mother

counting coins, cooking tea,

filling the car, the cupboards, the silence,

filling everybody else

while wondering who, exactly,

was meant to fill me.
I am soft in places

people mistook for weakness.
I am sharp in places

where I had to grow teeth.
I have loved too hard.

Gone back when I should have gone home.

Answered messages I should have buried.

Fed addictions that were not mine.

Carried men like wounded birds

until their claws left proof.
I have spent money

I needed for peace.

Missed the small walks

back to myself.

Slept through evenings.

Cried over men with no map

for the country of me.
I have wanted saving.

I have wanted worship.

I have wanted someone to look at me

and say,
There you are.
I have been looking for you
all my life.
But I have also saved myself

more times than anyone saw.
I have sat in cars

with my heart in pieces

and still driven home.
I have stood in kitchens

with grief in my throat

and still fed my children.
I have gone to work

when my soul was barefoot.
I have laughed

when life had the nerve

to be ridiculous.
I have written my way out

of rooms with no doors.
MissT was not born from ease.

She clawed her name

from the rubble,

put lipstick on the wound,

and called it literature.
Divorced.

Damaged.

Dangerous.
Not because I am ruined,

but because I know

what ruins look like now,

and I refuse to decorate them

for anyone else.
I am the daughter

who wanted love

without earning it.
The woman

who still looks back at storms

because even thunder

can sound like home

when you have lived inside it

long enough.
I am the mother

who worries, rages, rescues,

then wonders why she is tired.
I am the grandmother

with softness still blooming

in the bruised garden.
I am the driver.

The chief cook.

The midnight thinker.

The woman with ten tabs open

in her head

and one battered little soapbox

facing the world.
I am bad decisions

and beautiful instincts.
I am debt letters and dreamwork.

Tea bags, petrol fumes,

wet Welsh roads,

and a heart

that keeps sending up flares.
I am the woman

who has been blamed

for weather she did not make.
The woman

who mistook chaos for passion,

attention for love,

need for devotion.
But I am learning.
I am learning

that love is not supposed

to cost me my pulse.
I am learning

that forgiveness

does not mean handing someone

the knife again.
I am learning

that leaving

can be an act of mercy.
For them.

For me.

For the girl inside me

who waited too long

for someone to come back kind.
I am all of it.
The ache.

The bite.

The bad choices.

The brave mornings.

The poems.

The payments.

The panic.

The power.
I am not clean-cut.

I am not easy.

I am not small enough

to be convenient anymore.
I am Tracey.
I am MissT.
I am the woman

who drove through hell

with mascara on the dashboard

and grief in the passenger seat,

then looked the devil dead in the eye

and said,
Move over.
I’m driving now.