I don’t look up anymore
because hope used to lie to me.
I learned how to keep my eyes level—
not asking, not expecting,
just surviving the next breath.
This face has been weathered.
Not by years…
by moments.
Moments where I chose to stay
when it would’ve been easier to disappear.
They call this broken.
I call it evidence.
Evidence that I’ve knelt in places
no one came looking for me.
Evidence that I carried shame
like a second spine
and still stood upright.
Every drop on my skin
is a night I didn’t quit.
Every shadow
is a version of me
that didn’t make it out—
but made room for this one.
I am not clean.
I am not fixed.
I am not finished.
But I am here.
And that means something.
This isn’t the face of a man who lost.
This is the face of a man
who paid the price
and lived long enough
to remember who he was
before the world tried to erase him.
Broken?
Maybe.
But broken things let the light in.
And I’ve got just enough left
to keep going.
J.B.
