reading room
You Don't Have to Earn Your Pulse
You are not something to complete. There is no final form waiting in the distance, tapping its foot.
Your heart keeps tempo better than any metronome you've ever argued with, even when your thoughts rush ahead or stray.
Your lungs keep working on the days you forget how to, without asking permission.
No one is born with a checklist pinned to their chest or rules explaining how not to feel so much.
You arrive in the morning before ambition wakes up, hair making its own decisions, mind halfway through a sentence, and still the light finds you.
There is a hush between thoughts colliding, a small room where the Playstation fan hums and — for a moment — nothing is required except that you exist.
It appears in odd places, the warmth of a mug held with both hands, the pause before answering a question, the soft ache of caring more than you planned to.
That space stays open whether or not you think you deserve it.
Every breath is simply happening, the body voting yes again and again.
Humanity is not an achievement. It is the everyday miracle of being here, confused, alive, and breathing anyway.
— Lilith