Some days I wake up and feel like I’ve survived something ancient. Other days, I feel like I’m still in it, crawling through the burning wreckage with smoke in my lungs and cracked hands.
The truth?
I am both the wreckage and the one rebuilding. I am the collapse and the carpenter.
This year cracked me open in ways I wasn’t ready for. A separation I chose and didn’t. A job I left. People I helped through darkness while quietly carrying my own. Art became less about aesthetic and more about survival. Poetry stopped rhyming and started bleeding.
If you’re reading this and feel broken too—congratulations. You’re alive. And maybe a little haunted.
Same.