Nine years have passed, yet time has never learned how to loosen its grip on you. You still live in the quiet places in memory’s soft light, in the pause before a smile. Your name, Rose, was never just a name. You bloomed in patience, in warmth given without keeping score, in love that never asked for repayment. You held family together with steady hands and gentle strength, teaching without lectures, loving without limits. Even now, your lessons linger like a familiar song I

Today I wake with my shoulders back, breathing deeper than yesterday. The mirror doesn’t argue with me it nods, like it finally understands. I move like I belong in my own skin, no apologies stitched into my steps. The weight I used to carry stays on the floor behind me, dust instead of destiny. Today feels bright in a quiet way not loud, not forced, just steady. Like confidence that doesn’t need witnesses to be real. I smile because I want to, not because I’m supposed to. I

I sat in your chair but you never really saw me just a shadow stitched together from stories I didn’t choose. Your questions weren’t questions, they were verdicts in disguise, loaded with assumptions you’d already decided were true. You nodded, but not to listen only to wait for the next place to cut me off, to shrink me down into something easier to dismiss. You spoke of “professionalism” like it was a crown you wore, but all I saw was bias dressed up in a blazer, judgment h

I lowered my voice on purpose. Softened my words. Chose calm like it was a peace offering laid carefully on the table. But tension doesn’t dissolve just because you ask it to. It lingers. It hums beneath the floorboards, paces behind clenched teeth, waits for the smallest spark to justify the explosion it’s already planned. Negativity doesn’t announce itself it seeps. Into pauses that stretch too long. Into sighs loaded with resentment. Into eyes that stop listening before yo

Being yelled in the face is an invasion. It’s spit-laced syllables slamming into your skin, a voice weaponized, meant to corner you, meant to make you smaller than the space you stand in. It’s volume chosen on purpose not to speak, not to explain, but to dominate. Every word lands like it knows where to hurt. Your name sounds wrong in their mouth. Your mistakes are dragged out, dressed up as proof that you deserve this moment. Your body reacts before your mind can catch up. J

February 25th, 2015 is a date my heart still circles back to, no matter how many years try to soften it. I miss you in the quiet moments, the ones no one notices when something funny happens and my first instinct is still you. You were my constant, my safe place in human form, the one who knew my chaos and never asked me to shrink it. Time keeps moving like it didn’t lose anything, but I did. I lost conversations that never got finished, memories we never got to make. Some da

My mother wears her strength like quiet fire, Not loud or sharp, but steady and true. She walked through fear with trembling hands, And still chose to move forward she always does. Colon cancer tried to steal her light, Tried to write an ending she never agreed to. But she is made of grit and stubborn hope, Of deep breaths taken on the hardest days. She learned how to be brave when no one was watching, How to smile through pain she never deserved. Every scar is proof she stay

Some days I wake up heavy, like the air forgot how to lift me. My smile shows up late, and my thoughts speak louder than I want them to. I’m not okay but I’m still here. I drink my coffee slow, tie my shoes anyway, tell myself: just today. Not the whole future, not the mess of yesterday just this breath, this step, this minute. Some days healing looks like survival, and that has to be enough. I’m learning that progress doesn’t always feel like hope sometimes it feels like cho

Tell me plainly what did I do, what small mistake lives in the space between your shut door and my steady knocking? What echo of me has bruised the hush that now sits heavy on your side? I stand at the threshold with my hands empty, asking the same plain thing: what did I do? You fold your silence like paper, tidy and exact, and place it across our table. I trace the crease with a fingertip as if a map might form: where did the route turn? Was it the words I didn’t say, or th

I am not alone, yet the night inside me howls like it’s never known a voice. I sit surrounded by love by proof, by presence, by people who care and still I feel like I’m sinking through the cracks of my own chest. There are hands reaching for me, but my bones feel heavy, as if loneliness has weight, as if it’s something I carry in my blood instead of something that can be set down. I know I am loved. That truth doesn’t vanish in the dark. It stands there, unflinching, watchin