Even a gift can be ugly.
It doesn’t arrive in silk
or land softly in the hand—
it drags itself across the floor,
loud, uneven,
refusing to be mistaken for grace.
You thought relief would feel like light.
Instead, it felt like friction—
paper instead of air,
checks instead of ease,
a system that stutters where you once smoothed.
But what you called smooth
was your own body absorbing impact.
You were the silence
that made everything look like harmony.
Now the noise has somewhere else to live.
They call it awkward.
You call it visible.
They call it inconvenient.
You call it accurate.
And accuracy is not pretty.
It has edges.
It names who carries what.
It refuses to blur.
This is the gift—
not polished, not gentle,
not grateful for being received.
It is the return of weight
to the hands that generated it.
It is the end of invisible labor.
It is the moment the structure stands
without you holding it up from underneath.
Even a gift can be ugly.
Especially the ones
that give you back to yourself.
© GÄ
Poétique 