The Shape of Surviving

By Megan Gragg

I learned early 

that softness was treated like a confession – 

like something you admit 

when you’ve already lost. 

But listen: 

my hands have held storms 

and still remembered how to open. 

I have folded myself into smaller rooms 

just to hear the echo say my name back differently. 

I have worn pronouns like armor, 

like wings, 

like questions whispered into a mirror at 2 a.m. 

Some mornings 

my body feels like a house mid-renovation – 

walls down, dust everywhere, 

blueprints written in pencil 

so they can be erased when I change my mind 

about who I am allowed to become. 

They told me survival is quiet. 

They told me strength is stoic. 

They told me healing looks like silence. 

But I have heard the way grief sings 

when nobody tells it to hush. 

I have seen love arrive without knocking, 

tracking mud across the floor, 

apologizing for the mess it makes 

while building a garden in my ribcage. 

And maybe this is what courage is: 

not standing unbroken, 

but standing anyway 

with cracks glowing like constellations. 

Maybe hope is just 

breathing in sync with strangers on a bus, 

wondering who else is carrying a secret tenderness 

so heavy it bends their posture toward the earth. 

I am learning 

that identity is not a destination 

but a verb –

a long road you walk barefoot 

so you can feel where you’ve been. 

Some days I want to disappear 

into a quiet where no one judges me, 

where every reflection says, 

yes, you are real. 

Other days I want to shout my existence 

into the sky so loudly 

that every lonely kid hears it echo back: 

You are not too much. 

You are not unfinished. 

You are not alone. 

We are galaxies practicing gravity. 

We are lightning learning gentleness. 

We are the soft rebellion of staying. 

And if the world asks you 

to choose between being safe and being honest, 

may you remember: 

your heartbeat has always sounded like a drumline 

leading you home. 

---

Megan Gragg (they/she) is an archivist and writer who believes stories are a form of survival. Their work lives at the intersection of memory and imagination, exploring queer identity, tenderness, and the ghosts we carry with us. Trained in archival practice but drawn to poetic storytelling, Megan writes about becoming, belonging, and the quiet rebellion of staying soft in a hard world. Follow Megan on Instagram: @graggmeg

Photo credit: Anniebeth Photography