Between Bruises & Blooms

Yes,
I used AI
for a cover.

A picture.

A frame.

A doorway
into something
I had already written
with my own two hands.

But the words?

The words were mine.

The grief was mine.

The memories
I had to drag up
from places
I spent years
trying to bury
were mine.

The bruises
were mine.

The fear
was mine.

The nights
I sat awake
trying to turn pain
into something
that would not kill me
were mine.

No machine
lived through that.

No prompt
stood in my kitchen
while my hands shook.

No algorithm
remembered
what his anger sounded like
from the other room.

No generator
had to learn
which footsteps meant
run.

AI did not write
my history.

It did not survive
my relationships.

It did not lose
what I lost.

It did not bleed
between these pages.

I did.

So yes—

I used AI
to help make an image.

And somehow
you decided
that meant
the blood inside the book
belonged to a machine too.

It doesn’t.

Every poem
came from me.

Every sentence
was pulled
from somewhere
I actually lived.

You can hate the cover.

You can hate
how I made it.

You can hate AI
until your throat
goes raw.

But you do not get
to erase me
from my own writing.

The cover
was a tool.

The story
was my life.