Today I learned
a dream can be published everywhere
except where I am standing.
Australia held it first,
then Japan,
then India—
little green lights blinking on
across an ocean
while Canada kept the door locked.
I counted down anyway.
Fifteen.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
Until one.
I sent my friends into the countdown
like we were waiting for fireworks,
like the whole sky would split open
the second the clock agreed
I was finally an author.
And then—
nothing.
Just me,
my phone,
a refresh button worn thin,
and the rude discovery
that Seattle had moved midnight
two hours farther away.
I laughed,
because what else do you do
when your own book
has travelled farther than you have
before it makes it home?
Maybe that is fitting.
What the Bruises Remember
was never born quietly.
It came from waiting.
From surviving.
From learning that sometimes
the thing you bled into existence
doesn’t arrive when you begged it to.
It arrives when it arrives.
Across time zones.
Across borders.
Across every version of me
who once thought
I would never make it this far.
So tonight,
I am still waiting.
But somewhere,
someone can already find
my name beneath a title
I once carried only in my chest.
And somehow,
that makes the waiting holy.
By morning,
the book will be home.
And so will a piece of me
I thought the bruises kept.
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