I Still Stand

I was the moon once,

lighting your darkness.

No questions. Just light.

But you—

you were the wind that slipped away,

not even a rustle of goodbye.

Days without words

hung from my chest, heavy beads.

Alone,

I didn't crumble. I watched. I waited.

My love was rain on parched fields:

soft, steady, giving.

You turned it to mud,

trampling it like it was nothing.

I swallowed every lie you fed me,

like a mother's bitter medicine

for the child in her heart.

But I wasn't your mother.

I was the fire you kept poking,

thinking it wouldn't burn.

While you slept soundly,

I burned my dreams to keep the house warm.

From those ashes, I rise now—

not a phoenix.

Something fiercer,Quieter.

Unapologetically whole.

I am no longer your shadow.

You forgot how I was born.

I remember.

I am woman.

I am flame.

I am mother.

I am the poem you will never finish reading.

My tears were not drops;

they were oceans.

If you couldn't spark a light in that sea,

the loss is yours.

What I lost...

has become the very thing that now makes me win.

I Still Stand.

Not on your path.

In my own light.

I walk not through memories of you—

but through the triumph of me.