What accepts is not what survives.
Survival is loud,
announcing itself with scars, with stories, with proof.
Tolerating is more quiet,
settling into the body like weather,
changing posture before it changes language.

I come from women who did not leave,
but learned how to rearrange themselves inside of the staying.
Women who could sense exactly how much love a room could hold
before it became dangerous as sin.
Women who folded their want carefully,
so it would fit inside a life already spoken for.

In my years, they taught me strength is often mistaken for softness.
That my patience can look the same as silencing.
Sometimes, the most radical thing a person can do
is to admit they are tired without turning it into weakness.

There are moments I envy those who believe in sweet exits.
In passage ways separating before from after.
My life has been a series of near-decisions,
choices made slowly enough to look like pure accidents,
boundaries installed so carefully,
they resemble habits instead of solid walls.

Something in me remains unruined,
Not untouched, never that –
but unruined in the way withered trees decay
after years: scarred, altered, ancient,
yet stubbornly rising.

I am peeling back layers to trust what stays upright without applause.
The parts of me that continue without witnesses, without audience.
Parts that do not need to be redeemed to be worthy of breath.

If there is a future here, it will not arrive suddenly.
It will grow the way roots do,
out of sight, without permission,
claiming ground never meant to hold it.

may garner