Between Bruises & Blooms

There is a room inside me
that no one has ever entered.

Not because the door is locked,
but because I have never found
the language to invite anyone in.

It is where every almost lives.

The almost family.
The almost forever.
The almost phone call.
The almost goodbye.
The almost version of me
who never learned how to survive.

It is not grief,
because grief knows what it has buried.

It is not hope,
because hope still expects tomorrow.

This feeling lives somewhere between them—
a place where old bruises
grow wildflowers through the cracks,
where ghosts are not frightening,
only familiar.

Sometimes I catch it
in the steam of my morning coffee,
in the cigarette that burns
a little longer than my thoughts,
in the laughter of children
that reminds me
life keeps choosing me,
even when I forget to choose myself.

It is the weight
of carrying every version of my heart
at the same time.

The girl who waited.

The mother who stayed.

The woman who broke.

The poet who gathered
every shattered piece
and called it a garden.

No dictionary has ever met this feeling.

Maybe it was never meant to be named.

Maybe some emotions
are too vast for language,
too sacred for definition.

Maybe they simply ask us
to sit beside them
until they become
another flower
growing quietly
between the bruises
and the blooms.