✞ Autopsy of a Survivor ✞

 

✞ Autopsy of a Survivor ✞

If someone performed an autopsy

on my past,

they would not find bones.

They would find

burned-out streetlights buzzing over empty highways,

the sour perfume of cheap liquor soaked into memory,

and a thousand unfinished prayers

jammed into heaven’s mailbox

like letters no one ever came to claim.

My history is not a story.

It’s a crime scene the rain refuses to wash clean.

There are fingerprints

of people who swore they loved me

pressed deep into the bruised fruit of my ribcage.

There are broken bottles

where hope used to sleep.

There are entire nights

lodged in my lungs

like smoke from a fire

that burned the house down

but somehow left the walls standing.

I have swallowed so many storms

my bloodstream sometimes crackles

like it’s remembering lightning.

And the voices in my head

are not whispers.

They are feral dogs

dragging rusted chains across the hallway of my skull

at three in the morning

while the dark sits on my chest

like a landlord demanding rent

for a body I barely recognize.

People talk about rock bottom

like it’s a floor.

But rock bottom is actually

a basement with the stairs ripped out,

a room where the light bulb swings

but never turns on,

where every wall echoes

with the sound of your own breathing

asking if you’re still alive.

And still

I crawled.

Through glass.

Through memories sharp enough to bleed from.

Through the wreckage of the people I used to be.

Some mornings

I wake up

and my soul looks like a battlefield

after the soldiers have gone home.

Smoke.

Silence.

A helmet in the mud.

One stubborn heartbeat

refusing evacuation orders.

That’s the miracle nobody talks about.

Not the angels.

Not the redemption stories.

Just this:

A cracked ribcage

holding a pulse

like a lantern

swinging in the wind

inside a ruined cathedral.

And somehow—

against every prediction,

against every night that tried to bury me—

the light

is still burning.