She didn't rise like a phoenix.
She crawled.
On hands that trembled,
through glass she once shattered herself.
There was no fire.
No applause.
Only the sound of her own breath --
ragged, but real.
Healing didn't come with sunlight.
It came in fragments --
in mornings she didn't hate,
in nights where the silence didn't scream,
in moments where she chose not to disappear.
She still carried the past
like an old bruise,
bit it stopped dictating
who she had to be.
She found beauty in the smallest of things --
the warmth of her child's sleepy sigh,
the taste of coffee made just how she liked it,
a song that made her feel something
without dragging her under.
She let herself cry.
She let herself rest.
She forgave herself for everything
she did to survive
when survival was the only thing she knew.
There were days she still looked
into mirrors with haunted eyes,
but now she met them with gentleness,
She no longer saw a girl left behind --
she saw a woman
who stayed,
even when no one else did.
The voices that once told her
she was unworthy,
unwanted,
unlovable --
they still whispered
But she didn't listen anymore.
She had become her own shelter.
Her own home.
Her own proof
that even the forgotten
can remember who they are.
Because buried beneath the wreckage
was not just a flicker --
but a fire.
Small. Quiet.
But steady.
And wholly, completely hers.
She wasn't healed.
But she was healing.
She wasn't whole.
But she was rising.
She found her fire --
not in anyone else's arms,
but in the steady, trembling beat
of her own heart.
© Dark Water Diaries
I struggle sometimes when I go back and read my writings, the memory of the past brings forth the pain – a pain I thought I had erased. To anyone listening -- if you are still crawling, still aching, you are not too late, you are not too lost, you are not unworthy of light and love. You are the match. Strike it.
