I was five when my world cracked
Hands that should have kept me safe
Taught me shame before I knew how to spell it.
My innocence stolen before my baby teeth could fall.

At nine, the sky turned black.
I watched my father leave this earth,
not with a goodbye,
but with a silence that still echoes in my bones to today.
I did not know what grief was,
only that I couldn’t find his arms when I needed them most.

My mother’s love was never absent,
but it felt like it was when i was,
Pulled from her warmth
into the house of a woman
whose hands spoke in bruises,
Whose love came with thorns.
I learned to smile with broken teeth,
To speak gently to survive storms
That had my name carved in them.

I stood so still...

At twenty-nine, the ground shook again.
Another thief, this time stealing the voice
I had just begun to reclaim.
Another act I did not ask for,
Another night that left me hollow.
I walked through the fire again,
and this time, I didn’t die
but oooh, how I burned.

But here I am.
Breathing.
Still soft.
Still kind.
Still believing in love.
Still reaching for light
with hands that have known nothing but darkness.

I am not the things that happened to me
I am the voice I kept finding,
even when silence tasted safer.
I am the body I am learning to call home,
even when the world keeps trying to evict me from it.

Every year  that I age, I defy death.
Every breath I take, I defy silence.
Every step I walk forward,
I become my own Miracle.

So here is to the girl who learned to raise herself
and to the woman who is no longer apologizing
for how loud she had to cry
to be heard by God.

Happy birthday, my beloved.
You have survived a thousand endings.
And still
You rise.