The Becoming

I didn’t arrive,

I unraveled.

I came apart in pieces too small to name, beneath a roof that leaked more than just water.

Where love was rationed, and silence had a sharper edge than any belt or blade.

I was becoming on creaking floors soaked in rage,

in the space between slammed doors and the echo of footsteps that never came back.

I was becoming

while the television muttered distractions, and my mother disappeared behind curtains of smoke and glass bottles that promised peace, but never delivered.

No one told me how to grow;

they just showed me how to survive,

how to speak only when spoken to, how to clean messes I didn’t make,

how to smile when asked “Everything okay?”

With a mouth full of blood and doubt

I learned to hold my breath when the front door opened late.

I Learned the difference between footsteps that meant danger and ones that meant relief.

I learned that love, in our home, was a ghost that came and went depending on the weather or the weight in her veins.

There were nights I tucked myself into bed without goodnights,

without warmth, just the sound of sirens in the distance and my own heart beating like it was running from something it couldn’t name.

And still,

I grew.

Bent, yes.

Broken, often.

Miraculously rooted somewhere deeper than fear,

because even a child left in the cold learns how to create her own fire.

I became,

in every moment that I wanted to give up but didn’t.

I became,

in the mornings I rose alone and washed my face with freezing water because the heater never worked and neither did she.

I became,

in the ache of longing for someone to notice I was slipping, and finding no one but myself.

One day, I spoke,

one day, I screamed.

One day,

I whispered the truth, and it didn’t break me,

it freed me.

I began choosing joy like rebellion.

I held softness in my hands like it was the rarest thing I’d ever owned, and I let it stay.

Now,

I build altars from everything that tried to bury me.

I wear my scars as scripture.

I speak like thunder.

I love without begging to be loved back.

Because I didn’t just walk through fire, I was born in it.

And still,

I rose.

This is the becoming.

The slow undoing of pain’s grip.

The steady rise from barely breathing to standing in full bloom.

If you look closely, you’ll still see ash in my lungs

but you’ll also see wildflowers growing from every wound I was never supposed to survive