I Call the Ruins Home

I call the ruins home.

Not because I chose them, but because I survived them. I gathered what was left after the fall—shards of memory, scorched trust, walls that no longer stood—and I built something that looked like shelter. The ruins didn’t ask if I belonged. They recognized me. And I, too tired to run, let them fold around me.

But time is honest, even when we aren’t.

Looking back, I saw the trail I left behind—

not just footsteps, but fractures.

Not just storms I endured,

but storms I invited.

In calling the ruins home,

I hadn’t just found them—

I’d called them.

Summoned wreckage to meet me,

made collapse feel familiar.

And still, I stay.

Not out of comfort,

but because even in destruction,

I found the bones of something real.

Because sometimes survival means

learning to thrive in the house the fire couldn’t finish.