By Lulu
They say time heals all wounds
but nobody told time about the ones that bleed quietly,
The ones that don’t make sound,
The ones you press your hand against just to get through a Tuesday.
I have not always been easy to love. I know this.
I have been the storm when people prayed for sunshine,
The door that slammed when someone needed it open,
The voice that said go when my heart was screaming stay.
But ask yourself
What does a flower do when it is grown in concrete?
It does not bloom pretty. It blooms desperate.
Humanity handed me fire and then stood back, surprised, when I burned.
They gave me wounds with their words, their silence,
their leaving, their staying-but-not-really-being-there
And then had the nerve to critique my scars like they weren’t the ones who held the blade.
Judge not, Isn’t that what the good book says?
Yet here they are, with their gavels and their gossip,
Sentencing a woman they never tried to understand.
I have done things I am not proud of.
Let me hold that honestly.
I have loved people badly because I was loved badly first.
I have pushed away hands that were trying to reach me
Because every hand before them had only reached to take.
You don’t trust the light when darkness is all you were given as home.
So yes,
I snapped. I shut down.
I chose wrong doors. I stayed too long in rooms that were slowly taking my air.
But do not mistake survival for sin.
Do not look at a woman fighting her way out of a burning house
And call her reckless for how she ran.
What I want
Lord, what I want
is to be whole.
Not fixed. Not perfect.
Not the version of me that makes everyone else comfortable.
Whole.
Like a circle that knows where it starts and where it ends and is at peace with both.
Like still water. Like a hymn that finally lands on the right note and just… rests there.
Some mornings I wake up and I am almost there.
The light comes through the curtain a certain kind of soft,
And I breathe, really breathe
And for a moment I am not a woman made of wounds.
I am just a woman. Breathing. Beginning.
