Unmeasured

I still remember my little self, sitting in a classroom, forehead pressed to the window, struggling to measure things. Numbers were never kind to me. Adding, subtracting, arranging them into the neat puzzles everyone else seemed to solve—it was not my gift. I was a wordsmith, a dream maker, a keeper of pulses. I never learnt to measure, not in the way they wanted me to.

And it cost me on score sheets where red ink circled my failures. In life, where the evaluations were softer but still sharp: almost, not quite there, missed the mark, hopeful. I never arrived. My train kept moving uphill; the door never opened, and the station always seemed a little further away. I was always almost.

In this equation of living, I could not arrange the numbers correctly. Numerators toppled over denominators, and the answers slipped out of reach. And it was never just numbers. Sometimes I was too much—my lip color too dark, my fabric too loud, or too quiet, never quite right. I did not measure connections perfectly either: what to keep, what to let go, what weighed more, what should have been left unmeasured altogether. Which scale was the right one? Which scale should I have thrown away?

Now, I am beginning to see differently. Numbers are no longer punishments; they glimmer through universal patterns; constellations scattered across a dark sky. Equations begin to make sense to me. I measure more gently now, sometimes even with ease. I let go when it grows complicated, only to return later when it softens, when it reveals its shape.

But still, I wonder. Is there a cup I will ever fill, one that spills over with joy instead of lacking? Will there be a river I can step into with open arms, water touching every hidden part of me, claiming me whole? Or will I remain unfinished, almost, a fraction misplaced, a sum that never resolves?

What if I never measure up at all?
What if there is no right scale?
What if the pattern never reveals itself?
And what if—
I was never meant to know the answer,
never meant to be measured,
only to remain unmeasured

.