I am born of wide skies and whispering pines,
The rise of the Moon and mud on my boots.
I was raised where the earth baked hot under the sun,
Where love was given, not something you won.
I am the middle child, the wildfire bright,
Too soft to be broken, too fierce not to fight.
Naïve at the start but never unwise,
I learned from the wind, the rain, and the skies.
I love like a tempest, with all that I am,
Giving and bleeding, unbreaking, unplanned.
Kindness is etched in the bones of my soul,
Even when loving has taken its toll.
I have wept, I have laughed, I have buried my dead,
Carried their echoes inside of my head.
I have fallen in love, I have fallen apart,
And still, I rise up with the storm in my heart.
But the world sees the cracks, the fractures, the fall,
They see only ruin, not the strength in it all.
They whisper of sorrow, of time’s heavy hand,
Of a woman too shattered, too tired to stand.
They see the silence where laughter once rang,
The weight in my step, the ghost in my gaze.
They see only echoes of what used to be,
Not the fire still burning, unseen, inside me.
They don’t know the wars I have fought in the dark,
The pieces I’ve held when I fell apart.
They don’t hear the whispers I tell to the night,
That even in breaking, I’m not done with the fight.
I am more than this broken child
I am mother and warrior, woman and wild.
Honest and true, a bit shaken yet untamed,
I walk through the fire and dance in the rain.
Though I am weary and fighting the tide,
There’s a storm in my heart that won’t lay down and die.
When I rise, I shall be unapologetically free;
A force of love, of chaos, and finally me.