growth

  • 4:00 a.m. Some nights sleep doesn’t come. Tonight, this did. I missthe heavy kind of quiet. The kind that settledafter a bowl,when my body finally unclenchedand my face felt warm,like gravity had loosened its gripfor just a little while. For a few precious hours,every muscle surrendered. My thoughts stopped sprinting. The ache became a whisper.…

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  • Their Version of Me

    They’ll always have an opinion. Too loud.Too quiet.Too broken.Too healed.Too honest.Too much. They’ll call art a wastebecause they cannot seethe pieces of my soulpressed between the lines. They’ll ask why it doesn’t rhyme,as though painhas ever followedsomeone else’s rules. They’ll laugh at the wordsthat kept me breathing,dismiss the pagesthat carried mewhen nothing else could. They’ll…

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  • The Mother I Became

    They say a mother is born with her child,But mine was forged in storms. In hospital lights,In whispered prayers,In fear that stole my breath. She was bornWhen I chose courageEven while shaking. She was bornWhen exhaustion became routine,And love became instinct. She was bornHolding babies with one arm,And holding herself together with the other. I…

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  • The Quiet Trade

    I didn’t quit because I stopped needing it. I quit because tiny hands needed me more. There are nights when sleep still hides, when food still tastes like cardboard, when anxiety paces the hallway inside my mind. And sometimes I remember the little green flower that once taught my lungs how to breathe again. But…

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  • I have been broken open more times than I can count. By loss. By love. By goodbyes I never got to prepare for. I have carried storms inside a body that still learned how to hold sunshine. There were days I wondered if I was disappearing. But somehow, between the cracks, something kept reaching upwards.…

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