Ash Still Breathing

I’m not strong.

Not carved from iron.

Not forged in fire the way people like to imagine pain transforms you.

I’m not a victim.

I don’t wear my wounds like a name tag.

I don’t introduce myself by what was taken.

I’m not a survivor either.

That word sounds like a finish line,

like the war is over,

like the smoke has cleared

and the body knows how to rest.

I don’t live in labels.

They try to cage what is still moving.

They try to name something that changes every time I breathe.

I just wake up.

And I move forward the best way I know how.

Sometimes crawling.

Sometimes standing.

Sometimes frozen, listening for the sound of my own heartbeat to remind me I’m still here.

I just am.

I am breath and bone.

Ash and ember.

Crow perched on the edge of the morning,

Flame flickering—not roaring—refusing to go out.

With every exhale, I live in the quiet moments.

The sacred in-between.

The hush before memory speaks.

The softness the world forgets to look for.

And I endure in the loud ones.

When grief screams.

When the past claws at the present.

When the night feels endless and the body remembers what the mind wishes it wouldn’t.

This isn’t strength.

It’s presence.

It’s staying.

It’s choosing not to vanish.

Not today.

Not yet.

I don’t need a title for this existence.

I don’t need redemption arcs or inspirational captions.

I don’t need to be palatable.

I am crow and flame—

watchful, wounded, burning anyway.

And that is enough.