Photograph by Amy Hart
There’s a room
between yes and no,
a breath you almost notice
and then step across.
It lives in the grocery list,
on the back of who you thought you’d be,
half-packed bags,
the text you drafted and never sent,
the appointment you keep moving forward
like weather.
Becoming doesn’t arrive.
It unthreads.
Paint softening under paint.
The quiet work no one claps for.
I opened a drawer last night
and found a spoon
bent into a question mark,
as if the metal finally refused
another small obedience.
Most evenings, after the decompressing,
she stands beside me,
the woman I might become,
patient as an unanswered doorbell,
breathing in that pause
I keep skipping,
waiting for me
to notice
I am already turning.
Maybe I never knew my favorite color
because I never stopped long enough
to see which ones stayed.
Now there is pigment on my wrists,
crimson, ochre, something unnamed,
a calendar of small rebellions.
I paint without planning.
Let the water decide
what refuses to hold.
The canvas sags.
A fly lands in the blue
and becomes part of the sky.
I leave it.
Perfection is just another costume.
I’m tired of dress-up.
Some nights I cut paper,
gluing back only what still feels like pulse.
Some nights I write
to remind the page it is alive.
No deadlines.
No audiences.
No gold stars waiting in the distance.
Today, color arrives like a visitor
who knows where the cups are,
moves through the room
without asking permission.
I don’t know what to call it.
For once,
that feels like honesty.
Meg Taylor a poet based in Indianapolis, constantly navigating the tension between who I was taught to be and who I’m finally allowing myself to become. I’m drawn to the quiet thresholds in life, the pauses, almost-decisions, and tiny shifts that don’t look like transformation until you look back. These pieces come from learning to slow down after years of overwork and self-erasure, from trying to listen more closely to the body, memory, and the version of myself I keep meeting in the future. I write to understand the interior weather we rarely talk about: longing, doubt, resilience that doesn’t feel heroic, and the strange tenderness of starting over. Instagram handle: haney2cute