Faeloria

I’ve been broke so many times

the cracks stopped looking like damage

and started looking like geography.

Fault lines settling in deep.

Not dramatic ones.

Just enough to make the coffee tremble

without spilling over.

The kind of shaking you ignore

because you’ve been unsteady all along.

Everybody talks like something bigger is coming.

Like life is always holding its breath before the collapse.

I used to believe that.

Used to wait for the moment

everything would finally finish breaking

so I could start over on something solid.

But solid ground is what people call it

when nothing has shifted lately.

I kept going

even when I was tired of rebuilding myself

out of smaller and smaller pieces.

I would take an ordinary life—

a morning that doesn’t listen for cracks,

a silence that isn’t a warning—

if it could be handed to me intact.

But nothing is given intact.

Instead,

I learn to live in the after-movement.

To hang things on walls again.

To make coffee again.

To walk like the world didn’t tilt while I slept.

And, I started writing.

At first, I was sifting through rubble

for what was whole.

One day, I noticed

the pages were no longer dust.

My words started staying.

Small. Careful.

Not apologizing for surviving.

People call it resilience,

but broken things don’t return unbroken.

They become life sentences.

They become poems.

Songs.

Late-night conversations

with people when you thought you were alone.

I wouldn’t choose the breaking.

Still, the cracks hold light now.