Therapy, or Something Like It

Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA

A hush between stars,

A constellation drawn,

Not with straight lines,

but blurred, curved, unhinged world.

Her gentle footprints on the earth

hides underneath the rising tide,

But the faint glisten of the moonlight

reveals the imprint

Buried under stones,

Softened by the breath of the sea's

remembering...

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Healing doesn’t always feel like light pouring in. Sometimes, it begins with a conversation: unexpected, layered, and years in the making.

A recent talk with my sister unearthed memories of our childhood. Her view of me was different than I expected: quiet, distant, spoiled, she said, protected in ways she wasn’t. But what I remember is solitude. Not because I wanted to be alone, but because I never quite felt like I belonged.

I later shared this with my therapist, who helped me name what I couldn’t before. That even as a child, I carried the weight of a message, subtle but steady, that this wasn’t truly my home. That being adopted didn’t mean being fully embraced. So I learned how to be small, how to self-soothe, how to survive gently in spaces that didn’t feel mine.

I didn’t plan to write a poem about it. But the words came anyway. Not as answers, but as echoes.

This is not a memory.

This is something quieter.

A hush between stars.

A kind of therapy.

Or something like it.