Between Bruises & Blooms

I hated it there.

I need you
to understand that first.

I hated the walls,
the streets,
the life I lived
while constantly dreaming
of somewhere else.

I hated summers
that smelled like burning,

the sun hanging red
behind a curtain of smoke,

mountains disappearing
as if the whole province
were slowly being erased.

I hated learning
to look at the sky
and wonder
what was on fire now.

I counted the days
like prison marks,

promised myself
that someday
I would leave

and never look back.

And then
I left.

Funny thing
about freedom—

sometimes you spend years
begging for the door
to open,

only to find yourself
looking backward
once you’re finally
on the other side.

Not because
you want the cage again.

God, no.

I don’t miss
what hurt me.

I don’t miss
wanting to escape.

I don’t miss
the smoke settling
into everything,

or summers
where fire felt
less like disaster
and more like a season.

And now,

my boys are there,

evacuated
for the first time,

carried away
from somewhere unsafe

while I am provinces away
wishing I could gather them
into my arms.

It should remind me
why I left.

And it does.

But somehow,

I am still homesick.

Because I miss
the ordinary things
that existed
beside everything
I hated.

The familiar roads.

The turns
my hands still remember.

The trees
I never thought
I’d miss.

The mountains
when the smoke
was kind enough
to let us see them.

I miss my dad.

I miss my sisters,

the kind of closeness
you don’t appreciate
until a map
stretches itself
between you.

I miss my brother.

I miss my best friend
and the family
that became part of mine.

I miss being able
to say,

I’ll come over,

without first calculating
kilometres,

money,

time.

Maybe that is
the cruelty of leaving:

memory becomes
an unreliable narrator.

It softens edges.

Dims fluorescent lights.

Grows wildflowers
through places
you remember
as concrete.

It doesn’t erase
what happened there.

It just reminds you
that terrible places
can hold beautiful people.

That somewhere
can make you miserable

and still contain
half your heart.

Maybe I was never
homesick for British Columbia.

Maybe I am homesick
for everyone
I had to leave inside it.

For the version of me
who could knock
on familiar doors.

For the days
when the people I loved
weren’t scattered
across provinces.

For a life
I don’t want back

filled with people
I desperately do.

And isn’t that
a strange kind of grief—

to watch smoke
swallow the place
you once begged
to escape,

to know
you still wouldn’t
choose to live there,

and yet feel something
inside you ache

because somewhere
beneath that burning sky

are people you love,

roads you remember,

pieces of yourself
you couldn’t pack
when you left.

Maybe home
isn’t always
somewhere you want
to return to.

Maybe sometimes

home is simply
the place where people
you love
still know your name.

And maybe
that is why
I can hate somewhere

and still miss it
like hell.