I carry bruises like birthmarks, called them _character_, called them _mine_, like pain was some kind of heirloom, passed down in blood and silence. My heart? A dislocated joint still trying to reach people it don’t connect to no more. Out of socket, out of sync, still stretching toward love like a reflex. Instincts don’t know we’ve been hurt. It just remembers the shape of reaching. Healing? Its not some glitter glazed glow-up. It’s scab and scream. It’s the itch right before the skin says, “We’re good now.” It’s sutures made of all the apologies you've never gotten but still had to stitch yourself up with. I grew back slow, like cartilage— soft, quiet, not showy, but baby, I grew back strong. The kind of strong that don’t snap it _absorbs_. Bounce back like tendons. Like: try me again, I know how to flex now. My therapist said: “You don’t have to carry it all.” I said: “I don’t, but it’s in my spine now. It grew there. Trauma got a lease in my lumbar.” So I bend, but I _don’t_ break. Posture crooked, yeah, but this walk got rhythm. Call it a limp if you want I call it _beat_. And ain’t it wild how the body heals, but remembers? Like bones still ache before rain. Like a healed cut that still tingles when the knife walks in the room. Like lungs that breathe fine now, but flinch at certain names. But I’m here. A walking scar story. I’m what it looks like when healing isn’t pretty, but it’s _honest._ Let 'em say I’m too much. Let ‘em flinch at my fullness. I’m not afraid of my blood anymore. It knows my name. It flows anyway. 'Cause healing ain’t forgetting. It’s remembering _different_. It’s learning to live where the pain used to. Like a house that finally opened the windows after the fire. And baby, I _smell like smoke_, but damn— don’t I still shine?