Between Bruises & Blooms

I have always been
a little too willing
to let a book
break my heart.

I press flowers
between chapters,
leave pieces of myself
in imaginary graveyards,
and bring home grief
with names
I cannot explain.

Some stories leave me
with blood beneath my fingernails.

Others leave me
with hope blooming
through the cracks
of everything
I thought was dead.

And when the last page
finally closes,
I sit among the wreckage,
unable to explain
why my chest feels hollow
over something
that was never real.

So I reach for my pen.

Because somewhere
between their endings
and my beginning,
the words start growing again.

And what the book
could not hold,
I turn into poetry.