I am the one whose hands once trembled

under the weight of days that broke themselves against my spine

Whose eyes carried the grey of murky skies

I had not survived but merely endured

Whose laughter was a candle snuffed

by winds I could not name.

I was folded into myself,

a loaf pressed thin by hunger, by loss,

by nights when the dark seemed too heavy

to rise again, when the world

bent my shoulders and stole my fire.

But even in the flour of despair,

I remember the grain of me that waits—

tiny, stubborn, eternal—

the yeast that whispers

of rising, of warm gold,

of breaking open and giving.

I am the water that runs through my palms,

cold at first, but patient

Absorbing the dust of memory,

the salt of tears, the heat of uncounted mornings.

I knead myself slowly, deliberately,

folding pain into the supple curve of life,

watching it rise against gravity,

against the quiet disbelief that I could matter.

I am the fire that once seemed lost,

shut deep in my bones,

sleeping beneath ash and rubble,

but not extinguished—

only waiting, waiting

for the moment I remember my own hunger.

I am the loaf broken in ritual,

the offering given with trembling hands,

crumbs of my suffering scattered to the world,

and yet I am not diminished.

I am flavor, warmth, sustenance,

the body of my own becoming.

I am the cosmos kneaded into my marrow,

stars folded into the curve of my chest,

the pulse of planets, the breath of galaxies,

the wind that rises and falls over every horizon.

I am each stolen glance, each echo remembered,

every fragment of life I have swallowed,

and all I have yet to taste.

I am yesterday pressed into my seams,

the weight of memory that bends but does not break me.

I am tomorrow, trembling in the scent of warm bread,

the rising of possibility,

the promise that I am still whole, still luminous,

still more than the sum of what tried to crush me.

I am the salt in the water, the dust in the wheat,

the quiet fire that lights itself slowly,

even when the wind bites, even when the oven roars.

I am the heat, the smoke, the breaking crust,

the golden body that waits to be consumed,

the nourishment that feeds unseen hunger.

I am the hands that shape themselves,

the heart that remembers how to pulse,

the eyes that dare to shine again,

even when the world says no, even when the world

wants me folded flat,

I rise.

I am the loaf that gathers fragments,

the mosaic of stolen moments,

the tapestry of every loss and every gift,

the memory of sunlight on fields I never walked,

the echo of voices that told me I could not,

and I tell myself now, I can.

I am flour sifted through trembling fingers,

the water kneading itself into my palms,

the fire that curls through my marrow,

and the bread that waits, golden, rising,

ready to be offered, ready to feed,

ready to remind me

that I am not just surviving, I am luminous,

I am holy,

I am whole,

I am here.