I raised you with my scars
because they were all I had to give.
Lessons etched into skin, into silence,
into the way I sometimes held you too tightly
and sometimes not enough.

Each mark was a map,
a story I told without knowing
I was telling it.
I called it strength.
You called it home.
We both believed the lie,
until it wasn’t a lie anymore.

I’m sorry for the blindness in me,
the things I could not face
because naming them
would have meant
unraveling
entire rooms of silence,
For turning away
when the light hit just right
and showed me the cracks
I painted over
again
and again.

As you walked across the broken parts,
and didn’t break,
You found footing
on every piece of me I once thought
was unworthy.

The scars that grew thick over my pain,
Became the stepping stones
to the path you travel now.