Between Bruises and Blooms

I have been broken open more times than I can count.

By loss. By love. By goodbyes I never got to prepare for.

I have carried storms inside a body that still learned how to hold sunshine.

There were days I wondered if I was disappearing.

But somehow, between the cracks, something kept reaching upwards.

A little stronger. A little softer. A little more me.

I am not the woman who never fell.

I am the woman who learned how to bloom from the places that hurt the most.