Between Bruises & Blooms

I spent years
looking for home
in other people’s arms.

Mistaking warmth
for permanence,
attention
for safety,
and please don’t leave
for love.

I kept handing men
the keys to rooms
I had barely finished rebuilding,

then wondering
why I was always standing
in the wreckage
after they left.

So I stopped.

Stopped waiting
for someone to arrive
with soft hands
and promises
and call my broken places beautiful.

I learned how to hang
my own damn curtains.

How to fill the cupboards.
How to keep the lights on.
How to make dinner
with a baby on my hip
and another crying at my feet.

I built a life
between laundry mountains
and litter boxes,
half-drunk cups of coffee,
tiny socks,
bedtime stories,
and cats who apparently believe
personal space
is a hate crime.

It isn’t quiet here.

It isn’t spotless.

Some nights
the walls still remember
everything I’ve survived.

Some mornings
I wake with old ghosts
sitting at the kitchen table.

But there is laughter here.

There are little hands
reaching for mine.

There are paw prints
on freshly cleaned floors
and toys
exactly where I just fucking picked them up.

There are flowers
growing from places
I once thought
would only ever bruise.

And somewhere
between surviving
and becoming,

I realized—

I was never waiting
for someone
to bring me home.

I was building it.

One child.
One cat.
One ordinary morning.
One surviving piece of myself
at a time.

And maybe someday
someone will knock.

Maybe I’ll let them in.

But they will never again
be mistaken
for the house.

I am the home.