House Of Cards

If the cards had fallen differently,

I might have been soft.

Perhaps I would have been a young lady who bloomed without the fire, a girl who laughed more than she cried.

If the cards had fallen differently,

maybe I would trust the morning to keep its promises.

Maybe my mother would have stayed sober long enough to teach me how to love gently.

Maybe my father would have shown up and stayed long enough for me to believe I was worth staying for.

Maybe my body would not have betrayed me.

Perhaps there’d be no cancer crouched inside my DNA.

But still, the cards fell the way the cards fell

so aside from all the what ifs, I have come to realize that there is still purpose in a life built not from ease but endurance.

And so my story will end not with who I could have been, but who I became in spite of it all.