What We Carried Quietly

We learned early

how to be smaller than the room,

how to keep the door closed

even when the air was thin.

We became experts in reading pauses,

in measuring safety by tone,

in setting our bodies down

where they would not be noticed.

No one taught us how—

we simply knew.

We carried questions we were never asked,

memories without language,

a watchfulness that never slept

even in daylight.

Still, we rose.

Not loudly.

Not all at once.

We learned how to breathe around ache,

how to make homes out of fragments,

how to survive rooms

that did not deserve our presence.

There were days we mistook endurance for weakness,

silence for consent,

stillness for surrender.

But survival is not passive.

It is fierce in its own quiet way.

We kept going

with cracked compasses

and hearts that refused to close completely.

We learned how to say no

without sound.

How to say yes

only when our bodies agreed.

Now, some of us speak.

Some of us rest.

Some of us are still finding the words.

All of that is enough.

We are not what happened

in the dark.

We are what remained

after.

The choosing.

The staying.

The breath that said:

I am still here.

— Flower InBloom 🌿