Between Bruises & Blooms

Lilith Sorrengail
never looked
like softness.

She looked
like orders.

Like sharp edges.

Like a woman
who had buried
every tender thing
beneath rank
and responsibility.

She loved
like a general.

From a distance.

Through rules.

Through choices
her children
would not understand
until it was too late
to ask her about them.

And God,

sometimes
that is the cruelest
kind of grief—

learning someone
loved you

after they are gone.

Realizing
the coldness
was not absence.

That protection
does not always
look like arms
wrapped around you.

Sometimes
it looks like
a mother
standing between
her children
and the end
of the world

without ever telling them
how terrified
she was.

Then she dies.

And suddenly
Violet and Mira
are not daughters
arguing with their mother.

They are daughters
who will never
get another chance
to understand her.

Never another fight.

Never another
uncomfortable conversation.

Never another moment
to ask,

why didn't you tell us?

There are so many things
death steals
besides a person.

It steals
explanations.

Apologies.

Questions.

The possibility
of knowing someone
better
than you did yesterday.

Lilith died
protecting them.

And afterward,

all that love
she never knew
how to say

was everywhere.