A New Book

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I’ve been trapped
 in the same book.
 Rewriting the chapters
 that always ended the same.

A story of repeated cycles
 finding my way out,
 only for the same spirit
 in a different form
 to drag me back
 to the same start.

Love didn’t free me.
 Parties weren’t freedom either.
 New friends felt familiar,
 like déjà vu wrapped in false hope.
 Same script,
 different cast.

But today,
 I set the book on fire.
 Forty-one years
 of recycled pain,
 burned to ash.

This next book?
 It will not be predictable.
 It will not repeat.
 The characters will be new.
 The ending
 a plot twist no one saw coming.

I’m leaving it all behind.
 You will never see me
 the way you knew me.
 I won’t return to this space,
 this energy,
 this endless grieving
 I’ve carried for the last twenty-one years.

Today,
 with pen in hand,
 I write freedom.

Freedom to create.
 Freedom to choose who gets access.
 Freedom to taste joy
 without apology.
 Freedom to do me
 for me.

To everyone from the prior book,
 I wish you the best,
 but only my daughter
 will walk with me
 through the pages of this next story.

Because I am gone now.
 Gone from what I survived,
 gone from who I had to be,
 gone from the chains of my past.

And I won’t be back.

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