Nobody tells you
healing looks ridiculous
half the time.
It is not always
salt baths
and moonlight.
Sometimes
it is blocking a number
then staring at the screen
for an hour.
Sometimes
it is missing someone
you know damn well
you shouldn’t return to.
Sometimes
it is crying
because a song remembers
what you’ve been trying
to forget.
Healing
has terrible manners.
It arrives uninvited.
Pulls old bones
from locked closets.
Asks,
Remember this?
And suddenly
you’re grieving
in the cereal aisle.
Again.
But there are quieter signs.
I notice them now.
The way I say no
without rehearsing it
twenty times.
The way silence
no longer always means
someone is angry.
The way I can sit
inside my own home
without waiting
for the next explosion.
The way my children
climb into my lap
without fear.
The way I write
what happened
instead of pretending
it didn’t.
Maybe healing
isn’t becoming whole.
Maybe I was never broken
into pieces
that needed returning
to their original places.
Maybe healing
is learning
I am allowed
to rearrange myself.
To build something new
from everything
that survived the fire.
Thirty-one,
and I still have days
when smoke rises
from the ruins.
But look—
there are flowers too.
Stubborn little bastards.
Growing anyway.
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