Lights Blossom

Light was never meant to scream.

It’s not a performance,

it’s a patience—

a waiting for eyes to adjust

to what has always been.

I have learned

that silence has a shape,

and it is not absence.

It is a womb.

They don’t tell you that some of us

were born mid-collapse,

hands first—

grasping for a grip

on a world already slipping.

That our softness was not weakness,

but strategy—

a way to bleed without making noise,

a way to pray

with your back against the pavement.

I grew in the shade of men

who only spoke in cautions—

their love folded in between threats and traditions.

I watched them carry grief like it was gospel

and pass it down like it was gold.

And still—

some of us unlearned.

Some of us

took the ache

and made architecture from it.

Stacked our sadness into sermons.

Turned our father’s silence

into symphonies

only healing could hear.

You ever watch someone bloom

with both feet in the fire?

You ever see a boy

teach his own shadow

how to hold him?

That’s what this is.

This—

is not a poem.

It is evidence.

That I stayed.

When disappearing would’ve made more sense.

That I kept opening

when everything around me

taught me to close.

They will say it was talent.

They will call it voice.

They will say I had presence.

But I will know—

that it was just light

finally blooming

through everything

that tried

to keep me

dim.