🖤 The Language of Bruises

There was a time I thought love sounded like an apology.

That affection came after the hurt —

that pain was the proof I was worth returning to.

No one teaches you that survival has its own dialect.

It’s the way your body flinches before your mind catches up.

It’s learning how to smile through a tremor,

how to hide a scar beneath grace.

I spoke fluently in silence and endurance.

My body remembered words my mouth never said.

Every bruise was a sentence.

Every scar, a paragraph carved into the skin of my past.

But bruises fade, even when memory doesn’t.

And one day, I realized that I didn’t have to keep translating pain into proof.

That love doesn’t have to hurt to be real.

Now, my body speaks softer languages —

laughter that echoes without fear,

touch that doesn’t demand apology,

a heart that knows peace isn’t quiet, it’s safe.

💌 To the one who learned love through pain:

You are not broken for needing gentleness.

You are not hard to love —

you were just never spoken to in your native tongue.