I was a cavern, hollowed by storms,
veins lined with soot, breath laced with ash.
Grief hung from my ribs like moss in a forgotten wood,
a slow rot curling beneath my tongue.
The moon turned its back; even stars whispered away,
and I wore my rage like a cloak of thorns,
each step scattering petals of ruin,
each silence a howl stitched beneath my skin.
I became a storm cellar of memories,
echoing thunder that never touched sky,
harboring shadows that fed on the scent of blame,
their claws tracing old wounds like sacred scripture.
But dawn cracked the stone—
a golden vine threading through grief’s grip,
spilling warmth into marrow that had forgotten how to bloom.
The river inside me stirred—slow, reluctant—
yet still it moved, washing silt from the hollows.
I knelt in that current, palms open, and let the darkness slip—
a feather carried downstream, a name released to the wind.
Forgiveness was not a surrender, but a seed,
buried deep beneath frostbitten roots,
unfolding in silence, unfurling toward light.
And now—
my heart, once a cathedral of echoes,
is a garden humming with bees,
each bloom a memory healed, not erased.