Between Bruises & Blooms

You will not find the woman who waited.

She packed her hope into cardboard boxes, swept the dust from every promise that never became a home, and left.

Not because she stopped loving.

Because she started loving herself enough to stop surviving on almost.

The door you remember

does not exist.

It became firewood the winter I realized my children deserved a house without someone always standing halfway out.

If one day you come looking,

you will find flowers where the threshold used to be.

A garden.

Laughter.

A life that kept growing after you mistook my patience for permanence.

You won’t be turned away.

There simply won’t be any entrance left to open.

Because some endings are not locked.

They are dismantled.

Board by board.

Until the only thing left standing

is the woman who finally chose herself.