The Garden That Grows Where I Break

They told me brokenness was an ending.

A failure.

A scar that sealed shut and left nothing behind but silence.

But I have learned this:

wherever I break, something grows.

It begins small—

a moss that drinks from sorrow,

a fern curling shyly through the fractures of bone and memory.

I tried to hide it at first, ashamed.

Who would understand a body blooming with wounds?

Who would not recoil from petals growing out of cracks?

But the garden did not wait for permission.

It kept sprouting.

It kept singing.

And slowly, I began to listen.

I. The Flowers of Hurt

Each wound sowed its own seed.

When my voice was taken, a white lily rose in my throat,

its silence more eloquent than words.

When my heart was split open, violets crept into the fissure,

soft but unyielding, insisting on tenderness.

When grief raged through me, poppies flared red,

wild and bright, demanding remembrance.

Aster for loneliness.

Marigold for anger.

Daisy for innocence lost and half-reclaimed.

Every petal a translation,

every color a language for pain that had no speech.

I was told to “move on,”

but the garden would not let me forget.

It grew monuments out of sorrow,

shrines out of scars.

II. The Trees of Memory

Deeper wounds took root as trees.

For each betrayal, an oak—

tall, stern, immovable.

For every departure, a willow—

its branches dripping tears I could not cry.

For every love unfinished, a birch—

its white bark peeling, its beauty delicate and temporary.

At night I lay awake listening to their creak and murmur,

a forest shifting within my ribs.

I thought their weight would crush me.

But I learned:

you do not fight the forest inside you.

You sway with it.

You let the wind move you both.

III. The Seasons of the Body

Spring comes in unexpected moments:

a laugh after months of silence,

a breath taken without ache,

a green shoot daring to pierce through scar tissue.

Summer burns in my blood:

roses bloom out of rage,

sunflowers bend their broad faces toward forgiveness.

Autumn scatters leaves across my skin:

each letting-go a surrender,

each falling a freedom.

And winter—the hardest season—

covers me in frost.

The trees of memory stand bare,

and the flowers retreat to their roots.

Yet even then, beneath the snow of numbness,

life waits.

Always waits.

IV. The Garden Tends Me Back

I once thought I tended the garden,

pruning bitterness, watering with tears.

But no—

the garden tends me.

When I collapse, the roots keep me standing.

When I falter, the branches hold me upright.

When I despair, the flowers press their fragrance into my lungs,

reminding me to breathe.

Even in darkness,

I hear the soft language of leaves:

you have survived, you will survive.

V. What the World Sees

They see only blossoms.

They call me strong, resilient, beautiful.

They do not see the breaking that fed the roots,

the nights when I was nothing but soil and saltwater.

They do not know that every petal was born from ache,

that every fragrance carries smoke.

But the garden is not for them.

It does not bloom for admiration.

It grows for me.

It grows because it must.

VI. The Ritual of Roots

Now, when breaking comes again,

I do not resist.

I breathe into the fracture.

I place my hands on the wound like planting soil.

And I whisper:

Grow here too.

Sometimes it is a thornbush,

sometimes a wildflower,

sometimes only moss.

But always, something answers.

VII. The Testament of Green

One day, when my body is gone,

the garden will remain.

Flowers blooming in the shape of my absence.

Trees carrying the weight of my remembering.

Roots whispering to the soil of others:

Even broken ground can become holy earth.

And perhaps someone passing by

will rest beneath the shade of an oak I grew from pain,

or breathe the fragrance of a lily I birthed from silence,

and feel, if only for a moment,

that breaking is not the end.

It is the beginning.