Alter-Ego Poem by Henrietta Ezegbe

She is not louder than me.
She is precise.

Not a mask,
not sequins stitched to defiance,
but bone.
Spine.
Load-bearing truth beneath silk.

All this time
I thought I was the tide,
pulling at ankles,
apologizing to the shore for wanting.

But she was the horizon.
Unmoving.
Gold without asking the sun.
Refusing to bow
because the sea was feeling.

When I dissolved,
she gathered my name from the floor.
When I forgave too quickly,
she kept the ledger of my worth
in ink that does not run
at the touch of water.

She is not cruel.
She is exact.

Where I blurred,
she drew a border with my own hand.
Where I yielded,
she asked
to whom
and what does it cost
to keep disappearing.

I mistook her for spectacle,
for heels striking marble,
for rooms pivoting on her entrance.

But she lived instead
in the quiet no
that did not tremble.

In the boundary
that held even when I tested it.

In the decision
that required no witness
and no applause.

She is the sun under my ribs,
not scorching,
but constant.

A warmth that says:
feel everything.
Remain sovereign.

She is not my opposite.
She is my design.

The stillness that outlives the storm.
The current that remembers its mouth.

When I spoke her name,
it did not echo.

It stood.