Some of us are handed tangled maps,
roads inked in sorrow, street signs missing.
We grow up reading silence like scripture,
learning to smile while unraveling inside.

They say life is a journey
but what if your compass was grief?
What if the stars you followed
were the bruises you pretended not to feel?

It’s a strange kind of labor,
to unlearn the voice that whispers
you are too much, or never enough
to untie the knots in your soul
and call the frayed parts sacred.

Sometimes healing feels like forgetting
how to walk in the shoes that hurt you.
Sometimes it’s standing barefoot
in the wreckage of old beliefs,
and daring to rebuild with trembling hands.

But oh, what beauty lives in the broken
not in the cracks, but in the light that slips through them.
Not in being fixed, but in being real.

Because those who have wept
know the weight of another’s tears.
Those who have been silenced
can hear pain even when it's whispered.

You are not wrong for finding it hard
this life was not written in straight lines.
But your scars are constellations,
your wounds untranslated poetry.

And though the path is crooked,
you walk it with uncommon grace,
offering your empathy like a lantern
to those still stumbling in the dark.