I have walked through nights that had no stars,
where silence pressed against my chest
like a weight too heavy to name.
I have carried the ashes of voices
that once sang beside me,
and I have learned to speak again
with a throat made raw by grief.
The fire took more than I could count,
yet still I rose from its embers,
my skin marked, my spirit scarred,
but my pulse refusing to surrender.
Every step was a negotiation
between despair and defiance,
between the shadow that whispered “end”
and the light that whispered “continue.”
I have seen death’s face in the mirror,
and I have refused its invitation.
I have stitched hope into my wounds
like thread through torn fabric,
knowing the seams will always show,
but also knowing that broken cloth
can still keep out the cold.
Loss taught me the language of absence,
but survival taught me the language of return.
I return to myself each morning,
to the fragile miracle of breath,
to the stubborn rhythm of a heart
that insists on beating
even when the world feels hollow.
I have learned that freedom
is not the absence of pain,
but the refusal to be defined by it.
Madness is freedom,
because in chaos I find creation,
in ruin I find rebuilding,
in the shattered I find the possibility
of something new, something fierce,
something alive.
So I write these survivor lines
not as a monument to suffering,
but as a testament to endurance.
I write them for the ones who still walk
through nights without stars,
for the ones who carry ashes
and wonder if they will ever sing again.
I write them to say:
you are not alone in the fire,
you are not alone in the silence,
you are not alone in the loss.
We are the chorus of survivors,
our voices trembling but unbroken,
our songs stitched from grief and hope alike.
We are the proof that even in the ruins,
life insists on returning,
and freedom insists on being born.