I feel the first crick of the crack in my foundation.
My instability and insecurity shift underneath me, and the ground that connects me to the physical world grinds—revealing a fracture as thin as a hairline.
The tiny fracture wisps its way up my spine.

A faint, scattered red glow seeps from the base.
It tugs gently at the crack, pulling it slowly apart.

The red glow brightens as it climbs my spine, fading into a deep, vibrant hue—one that mixes and kisses the space between red and yellow.
Every tear-streaking, joyful laugh.
Every deep-burning, anguished scream.
They bleed the color of a perfect tangerine.

Every unwritten story begs to be read.
Every surge of movement, of passion, of creativity aching to heal.
All of it glows.

The fracture grows.
My spine, once steady, splits wider—cracking open to reveal a brilliant, sun-kissed yellow.

The fear of staying the same, and the six-feet-deep paralysis of moving forward.
And even though I’ve persevered, I’m actually frozen in terror.

It’s a debilitating, annoying, bright-colored sun—filling the gaps in the cracks—and the more these past indecisions glow, the louder the split in my spine becomes, ready for a hand to begin the surgery at the heart.

The beaming light that fills the split in my body goes dark.
The crack zig-zags, dancing and curving its way across my ribcage, toward the center of my walled and caged, hidden heart.

It stops.
It waits.
The vibrant pigments of blood red, tangerine orange, and sunflower yellow remain luminescent—glowing inside the dark, cracked crevices now spreading across me.

The fracture that halted at the center of my chest begins to dig deeper.
Like a slow slice into decadent cake, it incises through the breastbone with fluorescent intention—cutting past titanium clamps surrounding a heart that beats slow, like molasses.

The beats are tired—drained from emotional exhaustion.
The heart gives too much.
And the clamps?
They prevent it from receiving what’s universal:
That I am valued.
Loved.
Honored.
Inspiring.
But I’m unable to connect with myself on a soul-quenching level.

The breaks in the clamps give my heart permission to beat with purpose.
The beats give my heart a song of peace.
A peace that glows in forest green—
where wisteria, weeping willows, and painted lilies bloom in time with the rhythm of release.

So bright, the jade fluorescence enveloping my heart carves upward incisions—toward my throat.

The incision stops, then begins to split into three.
They crisscross over each other, curving upward along the jawline, contouring the outlines of the face.
A beautiful cerulean glows and starts to beat rhythmically with the heart.

Stutters, lisps—life that wasn’t spoken when the flowers needed water to drink—glow and flow out of the cuts in the throat.
Interpersonal quintessence floats out, bleeding sapphire beyond the epidermis.

The sapphire flows from the contoured face before the middle incision makes its way straight up, cutting past parted lips, dancing along the curve of the nose, and stopping at the bridge where it meets the left and right incisions.

Centered.

The wound that began as a crack, then a cut, now forms a hole in the middle of the forehead.
The hole falls inward, and an echo of confusion breaks a moment of silence.
A faint royal indigo drifts toward the top.
With eyes closed and lips parted, a realization begins to take over.

As a child, I was given direction and guidance, sometimes without understanding the true consequences for me.
I trusted knock-off representations of love, discernment, knowledge, and a future vision of who I was meant to be.
Going against the vision of others made me a fraud.

I was a fraud.

An electric spark flies out from the hole of misalignment.
The spark sputters, and a fired indigo spits from the bottom, landing on me without charring my purposeful skin.

The fired indigo continues to flow like a fountain, purifying me from the inside out.

The top of the incised hole begins to fracture upward, hugging the curve of my crown down my back, finally connecting to my cervical spine.
The fracture stops, and the crown of my head starts to sparkle with gold and white flickers of light.

I was never good. I was never bad. I was always perfect. I am always perfect.

Longing to be freed from my own self. Longing to be healed. Seen. Loved. Longing to trust.

The gold and white flickers of light start to dance and shine brighter.
They blend together with the other colors, and the incision from my crown opens.

I’ve always wanted it to click.
Like when I know something fits just right, I hear the sound of two pieces snapping together, or when the room is dark and I need to see, so I flip the switch and it takes a minute, but I hear the buzzing of a lightbulb turn on.

The light turns on, and everything that I thought was once broken, jailed off, and contained, I finally see is spilling out of me like ooey-gooey, colorful, sticky, wonderful slime.
It’s sticky, but it feels comforting and smells like lavender and clean linen, with a hint of lemonade.

I smile, eyes closed.
My incised smile and face form deep, cratered dimples.
A deep peace fills my body with lotuses and dragonflies.
Flickers of fireflies build from my toes and wrap themselves around the glow of my spine, brightening the sun and the tangerine, glowing with the deep forest green, and lighting the cerulean around my throat.
The fireflies wrap and dance around the fire of indigo and multiply at the top of my gold and white flickering lightbulbs.

Everything hurts because everything is open and bleeding in colors.
Everything hurts because everything is healing.
Everything hurts because everything is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Too afraid to look away from the cuts and the fractures and the open wounds.

Not afraid to let it spill, because the spill heals the surroundings of the body.
Painful as it was to open up, the beautiful, aching breath I was able to let out felt like a butterfly coming out of its chrysalis.