Start by walking back into that hallway you always rushed through

The one with the flickering light and the scent of freshly laminated floors,

You’re there again, backpack sliding off one shoulder

Your hair a little messy, your heartbeat too loud.

“Slow down.” You tell yourself,

It feels too big like you don’t know where you are

Just a schedule you kept folding in squares.

You tried so hard to take up less space,

To fit into the corners of the classrooms.

And when you think back to the voices you carried

The ones that echoed as you laid in bed at night,

Highlight the ones that stayed with you.

“You worry too much,” someone teased, not knowing you would replay it for hours,

“You’ll figure it out,” your favorite teacher states when you linger after class,

Let those be the lines you underline, 

Chalk on a blackboard in your memory.

Tell yourself to look up more often, 

The world wasn’t as heavy as it seemed

When you kept your eyes locked on the floor tiles.

There were windows you never noticed,

Peers you could have known well,

Moments you rushed past that were trying to hold you.

Remind yourself that the loneliness you felt

Was not a flaw but a field waiting to grow,

That the nights you spent staring at the ceiling

Would someday become proof of how strong a quiet heart can be.

And finally, tell yourself this

That one day, you will look back at your shaking hands

And realize they weren’t shaking from fear,

But from the weight of becoming someone wiser, someone older

Someone who survived every version of your younger self

Whisper it softly, like you wish someone had back then,

“You were never as lost as you thought.”