Between Bruises & Blooms

I thought I had already mourned you.

That was my mistake.

I thought grief was a door
you walked through once,
bloodied your feet on the threshold,
and somehow came out
different enough
to survive it.

But the dead keep finding me.

In old voices.
In impossible reunions.
In names spoken softly
when I have almost learned
how not to flinch.

Danika.

Like a wound
that still remembers
the shape of the knife.

Lele.

A little flame
I watched go dark
only to feel her warmth
brush against me again.

Jesiba,
giving everything
when I had already decided
I understood her.

And suddenly
I am crying
for people
who were never real

beside ghosts
who were.

Maybe that is why
stories hurt me
the way they do.

They know grief
does not disappear.

It changes rooms.

It waits quietly
behind ordinary days
until something—
a name,
a sacrifice,
a best friend
reaching across death—

opens the door.

And there I am again,

holding every person
I could not keep.

Fictional.
Real.
Gone.

My heart
has never cared
about the difference.