THE DUST OF OUR PAST SELVES

Going through life, chronic illness, and trauma has a way of eating at your core.

Working, suffering in silence, unnoticed.
Forced into a machine that was never meant for you.

You burn yourself out until there’s nothing left to do but stand back up.

Repeatedly.
Year after year.
Decade after decade.

All that’s left each time is a dark silhouette of yourself, surrounded by falling ashes on the floor — like a chalk outline at a crime scene.

But still, you stand back up, again and again,
leaving behind piles of ashes from everything that died inside you with the last fall.

Yet you rise again.
A different outlook on life settles in.
Falling is no longer an option.
Living is the only way forward.

That’s what a phoenix does.