You return again—
not as the girl the world adored,
but as the woman who has lived,
who has carried kingdoms quietly
in the chambers of her ribcage.
The mirror greets you
the way old witnesses do—
with tenderness,
with patience,
with a kind of honesty
that has never once betrayed you.
Some mornings you glimpse the girl you were—
snow-white bright, unbruised by time—
the one who twirled through corridors
with a laugh too loud for fear to catch,
the one who believed her crown
was made of possibility,
not permission.
And other mornings,
you meet the woman you’ve become—
the one who no longer bows to nonsense,
the one who learned to stand tall
when standing tall was dangerous,
the one who rebuilt herself
after every season the world mistook her strength
for something it could soften.
And she—
yes, she—
is the Queen.
Not softer.
Not smaller.
Not unsure.
But distilled.
Sharpened.
Wiser in the ways
no one applauds
but everyone depends on.
You stand now where all women eventually stand—
in that private borderland
where beauty becomes a question,
where time presses its cool hands
against your temples
as if asking permission
to sculpt you.
There is grief in meeting a face
that no longer resembles
the woman I still am inside.
You lean in.
You’ve come to be judged—
you think.
But the mirror interrupts:
Come closer.
Not to be judged, my Queen—
to be seen.
Magic mirror on the wall,
who is the fairest one of all?
The mirror does not hesitate:
Ask not who outshines you—
ask what you fear.
Not with your voice,
but with the tender, hidden corners
you’ve tried to hide even from yourself.
What you call loss
is only a doorway.
A shedding of illusions—
that beauty is worth,
that youth is power,
that time steals more than it gives.
You have not diminished.
You have deepened.
Roots run deeper
than petals dare dream.
You carry the wisdom
younger queens are not yet strong enough to hold.
You’ve forgotten yourself.
I have not.
I remember the way you once stood—
chin unshakable,
back unbent,
eyes bright as if lightning lived behind them.
I remember the woman
who did not ask permission
to be radiant.
She is still here.
Look again.
That space you think is absence?
That is God behind your sovereign eyes—
unblinking,
unbroken,
still choosing you.
The divine hides in places
you’ve been taught to shame.
Every crease on your face
is a stanza of the life you’ve lived—
not what’s lost,
but what remains
after everything else has gone.
Each line
a path you’ve walked,
a truth you’ve carried,
a memory that refused to abandon you.
Your past may heckle you—
old choices,
old shadows,
old voices of “not enough.”
But they hold no crown
you do not hand them.
And so the mirror speaks again:
Your face is not fading, Majesty—
it is becoming a poem
only time is wise enough to write.
You inhale.
Something softens.
Something settles.
Something rises.
The world may whisper its demands—
be thinner, quieter, older without aging,
younger without changing,
a little less strange.
Let it whisper.
You were never meant
to be a gentler echo
of someone else.
You were meant to be
your own thunder.
Look again, my Queen.
You are not old—
you are seasoned,
sacred,
sovereign.
And I—
your silver witness—
have remembered your beauty,
your truth,
your fire,
the fairest of them all,
all along.
