Between Bruises & Blooms

There are places
that know my name
better than people ever did.

A porch
where morning coffee
cooled beside forgotten dreams.

A gravel road
that listened
while I swallowed tears
too stubborn to become rain.

An abandoned house
where broken windows
held the sunrise
like stained glass for the unwanted.

The forest,
who never once
asked me to explain
why I arrived carrying ghosts.

The kitchen,
where tiny hands
reached for breakfast,
unaware that motherhood
sometimes wears exhaustion
like another layer of skin.

The edge of my bed
at three in the morning,
where poems gathered
before courage did.

I used to think
healing would arrive
with fireworks,
with certainty,
with a grand announcement.

Instead,

it came quietly.

It looked like
watering the plants
when my heart was dry.

It sounded like
children laughing
through rooms
that grief once occupied.

It smelled like coffee,
cigarette smoke,
and fresh earth
after the rain.

It felt like
learning that survival
isn’t the end of the story.

Blooming is.

So if you come looking for me,
don’t search
where I was broken.

Find me instead
among the wildflowers
growing from every place
I thought would bury me.