Muscle Memory

Some chapters end in fire,
others in the slow unraveling
of thread—pull one loose
and watch the careful weaving
come undone in your hands.

Trust returns like winter light:
slant and cautious, illuminating
the framework beneath—vertebrae
that held even when the foundation
cracked and shifted.

There’s a particular violence
in discovering the truth
wore your doubt
like a mask—that the flame
you thought was dying
was only starved of oxygen.

Gathering what scattered:
the pitch of my voice
before I learned to soften it,
the shape of knowing
before it was questioned into silence.

Some days I’m all salt and closed fists.
Some days, despite the killing frost,
something green pushes through.

Still separating
what grew from my own soil
from what was planted there—seeds
I watered in someone else’s garden,
tending roots that were never mine to grow.

Some nights I stand in the dark
and rehearse refusal
to the empty air,
training muscle and bone
to remember the weight
of enough.