Lennox Lane (Welcome to Stonebridge #2)

Lavender Haze

They called it love

the slammed doors,

the empty refrigerator,

the silence that swallowed my name whole.

They called it parenting

the sharpened words,

the bruises no one could see,

the way I learned to make myself smaller

just to survive another day.

But I have learned

that love does not arrive

with clenched fists and cruel tongues.

Love does not starve a child

and call it strength.

I was a seed

buried beneath resentment,

watered with bitterness,

left in the shadows by the very hands

that should have carried me toward the sun.

Yet somehow,

I grew.

Not because they nurtured me.

Not because they believed in me.

Not because they wanted me to bloom.

I grew because survival

became a language my roots understood.

Every mile I walked

became another branch.

Every tear I swallowed

became another petal.

Every cruel thing spoken over my life

became fertilizer

for the woman I would become.

The people who should have loved me to life

tried to hate me to death.

They mistook my softness for weakness.

My silence for surrender.

My kindness for permission.

They never realized

flowers crack concrete every day.

So here I stand,

lavender blooming through broken ground,

fragrant despite the fire,

beautiful despite the neglect,

alive despite their efforts.

And if there is a lesson

hidden inside my scars,

Let it be this:

You cannot kill a garden

that has already learned

how to grow in a drought.

You cannot curse a soul

that has made peace with the storm.

And you cannot stop a woman

whose roots were forged

in the dark.

I am not what they tried to make me.

I am what survived.