A Bloom in the Ashes

I was a garden left untended to and under nourished.
I became a place where wild shadows darkened, as weeds tangled tightly around my roots.
A place where thorns grew sharp as glass piercing anything in their wake.  
 
The storms had come and the winds stayed,  
Breaking my branches, stealing all of my resilience.
I forgot what it meant to blossom.  
I forgot what it meant to feel the sunlight nurturing my soul.  
 
Yet deep within all the fractured pieces and tainted soil,
Beneath the weight of grief and time,
A seed of hope stayed quietly waiting,
A fragile dream, a thread in time,
stretching its roots through the pain and darkness,
Reaching beyond the bounds of time.
 
Through cracks of grief, it found its footing.
Through tears, it drank.
through scars, it grew.
A tender promise echoing within the chaos,  
“I am still here, and so are you.”
 
For even in the deepest darkness,
A spark can grow, a flame can rise.
And from the shards of pain and sorrow,
A stronger self begins to rise.
 
The world may not have held me gently,
But still, I rose from broken ground and shattered pieces of myself left beneath me.
I learned that love begins in whispers,
Not in the echoes of harsh utterances from those wanting to harm you.  
 
So I kiss my scars like they are poems,
Written in ink of sorrow and grace.
Each line a map back to my center,
Each line a story of battles fought,
Each word a vow to speak my name,
A testament to the strength embraced.
 
Within learning to nourish my garden,
I learned to honor the resilience found in tending to my petals.  
Each one marking a chapter of who I’ve been and where I am headed,
And as I nurtured all my pieces,
Even the ones the world deemed unworthy,
I found my beauty in the quiet,
In every breath, in simply being.
 
For self love isn’t always loud,
Or bold like fire, or swift as rain.
It’s the sunlight breaking softly through,
The slow repair of tender veins.
 
So now I bloom, my garden wild and untamed.
The thorns, the weeds, they all remain.
But they are mine, they tell my story,
And in their growth, I find my name.