Magnificently Unfinished

I have spent too many years
kneeling before the myth
of the finished self.

The flawless life.
The healed wound.
The clean arrival.
The version of me
That would finally be worthy
Once, nothing trembled.

But life has not come to me that way.

It has come
with cracks in its hands,
with unfinished prayers,
with the rooms I entered
before I knew how to stand inside them.

It has come
through mistakes
I could not revise,
through grief
I could not outrun,
through doors
that closed without explanation
and still taught me
how to breathe differently.

I am unfinished
and already worthy.

I am imperfect
and fully alive.

I am still becoming,
and somehow
that is more beautiful
than the flawless self
I once believed
I had to become.

Let the myth go.

Let perfection go.

Let it fall back
into the dust
from which all false gods
eventually return.

Your life does not begin
after the cracks disappear.

It begins there
in the trembling, tender space
between who you were
and who you are becoming.

There,
your true light rises.

There,
your humanity breathes.

There,
grace does not wait
for completion
before calling you beloved.

You were already enough.

Perfection
was only the costume.

And nothing
could be more whole
than a life still open
to becoming.