Between Bruises and Blooms

Home isn’t always
four walls
or a street with your name on the mailbox.

Sometimes
it’s the scent left behind
on a borrowed hoodie.

It’s sawdust and sweat.
Sun-warmed skin.
A little bit of summer,
a little bit of hard work,
and somehow…
peace.

I never understood
how a person
could become a place
until I caught myself
breathing you in
long after you’d gone.

The strangest part?

It isn’t your cologne I miss.

It’s you.

The way you make my heart
forget
what it spent years
trying to protect.