They don’t see a person.
They see a monument
a crumbling edifice of bone and pain
that demands their awe.
Every step you take is a sermon,
every breath an altar
they gather around
to worship their own unbrokenness.

You are not flesh to them,
not blood,
not the soft thrum of a pulse.
You are spectacle,
a metaphor made manifest,
a story they tell themselves
about resilience and triumph.

“Remarkable,” they say,
as if the act of existing in your skin
is a feat so rare
it must be named,
framed,
turned into something
they can marvel at.

“Brave,” they call you,
as if you were a mountain
dragging itself out of the earth
just to be admired.

But bravery isn’t what you feel
when your legs buckle,
or your hands shake,
or the world narrows
into a corridor of pain.
Bravery is just the word they use
to make your struggle
easier for them to look at.

You are their mirror.
Your discomfort becomes
their lesson,
your survival,
their standing ovation.
“Look at you,” they say,
as if being seen
is the same as being known.

And you wonder
if you’d disappear entirely
without their words.
Would you fade into the wallpaper,
become a shadow at the edge of their gaze,
if you weren’t their remarkable story?

Because to them,
you are only real
when you bleed meaning.
Only human
when your existence reminds them
of what they still have.

The silence between their words
never speaks to you.
Their gaze never lingers long enough
to touch anything real.

In the echo of their remarks,
you’re left
still waiting
to be seen as anything more
than their reflection.