After The Ashes

There was a version of me that didn’t survive

the one who whispered “I’m fine” while quietly bleeding.

I shattered quietly beneath the weight of silence,

I became a grave for the girl who always smiled even when she was drowning.

But in the wreckage there was

a flicker,

a pulse,

a whisper that said:

get up.

So I did.

Not whole.

Not healed.

But hungry to begin again.

I rose, not like a phoenix

but like a woman who had to stitch her own wings from everything that tried to kill her.

I wear the scars like scripture now.

Every mark, a hymn.

Every wound, a lesson

I lived to rewrite.

And this new life,

this new life it doesn’t ask me to forget,

only to continue;

Louder.

Wilder.

Alive.