for luna

i wish so fucking badly i believed in heaven
so i could convince myself that i would meet you finally.

instead, i carry your ghost with me.
every day.
in everything.

you have never left me—
even though you are nowhere to be found.

i felt you before anything showed up on a test.
before a line.
before i could even say it out loud.

i just knew you were there.
i was never scared to be your mom—
i was certain.

you were mine.
we planned you.
we named you.
i had never wanted anything more.
you were my fucking miracle.

when the lines started fading,
i thought i would actually die.

i went to the doctor over and over—
blood tests, questions, silence.
then, finally, nothing.
they couldn’t find you.

you were just… gone.

and i truly thought i might go with you.

i’ve lived through so many atrocities,
but nothing has ever devastated me like losing you.

i think my body gave out from all the pain i was already in.
i think it failed us both.

and i’m so sorry.
i am so fucking sorry.

i wish i could’ve saved you.
i wish i had been stronger.

i’ll think of you every day until i don’t have thoughts anymore.

people don’t know what to say when a pregnancy disappears,
so they say nothing.

they pretend you never existed.

but i know you were real.
you are real.
you are my child.

so when ryan came, i froze.
six different tests said she was still there,
and i still couldn’t trust it.

because i was still so fucking broken.
still grieving you.

and now i look into her eyes and i imagine you.
i imagine you being together.
because you are sisters. you are.

i imagine what it would be like to have you both here.
i miss the version of life so fucking bad that had you in it.

you were my first miracle.
my first experience with a love so big it terrified me—
in the best way.

you made me believe in something beyond survival.

and even though ryan is here now,
even though she saved me in ways i didn’t know i needed saving—
you were the beginning.

i will never regret you.
you are the most unbearable, beautiful love i’ve ever lost.

and i carry you.
in my every cell.
in my silence.
in the mother i am,

always.

you don’t get to call it love now

the pull doesn’t make sense to you
because you can’t fathom the violence it took for me to stay this gentle.

you don’t know how many times i had to choose softness
when survival demanded something uglier.
you don’t know how many times i could’ve turned bitter
and chose to stay whole instead.

you hurt me because i saw you.
clearly. sharply. without mercy.
i saw the truths you buried under your ego.
i saw the parts of you rotting.
and i held up a mirror even when it cut my own fucking hands.

and still—
when i had every reason to gut you,
i stayed soft.

i gave you kindness you didn’t earn.
compassion you didn’t return.
love that demanded nothing from you
when you had nothing real to give back.

and maybe that’s what’s still clawing at you.
not my anger.
not my silence.
not even my absence.

it’s the way i never became your cruelty.

it’s the way you gave me every reason to become like you—
and i didn’t.

you burned through every bit of goodness you thought would always refill itself.
but people like me don’t come twice.

you don’t get to call it love now.

you don’t get to miss what you tried to destroy.
you don’t get to ache for something you left bleeding.
you don’t get to name the wreckage "love"
just because you can still see the outline of what you lost.

i was real.
i was devastatingly fucking real.

and you will never—
never—
feel that again.

they tried to fucking kill me

i was born to a man who didn’t want me.
but worse—he didn’t care.
indifferent to whether i was fed, warm, safe.
indifferent to the fact i even existed.

he saved his fire for my brother—
a boy raised on violence and praise,
taught that love was brutal,
that women are weak.

my mother—
she worked herself to exhaustion.
five jobs. five hundred worries.
no time for anything but keeping us alive.
she cared enough to try,
but survival leaves no room for anything else.

i was always alone.

because they fucking hated me?
like my father did.
like my brother did.
like every man after them.

they wanted me small.
silent.
grateful for the suffering they handed me.
they tried to kill every spark in me.

i should’ve known.
when the first man tore doors from their hinges,
drove 100 miles per hour just to watch me flinch.

then came the biggest projection i ever invented—
thinking what was in my chest was real.

i miscarried on the bathroom floor alone.
sobbing for the child who could’ve tethered me to him.
screaming like a wounded fucking animal, bleeding out.

i died too that day.
realizing i was just another body to fill his emptiness.
replaced by literally anyone.
he must have hated me too.

or worse—
he was always a hallucination.

so i ran.
straight into the arms of a man i knew could destroy me.
i thought if i could create something whole,
it wouldn’t matter that i never had been.

and then i saw my own version of my father.
i had found him.

he took me from standing to flat on my back.
head against the wood.
pregnant.
his hands around my throat—squeezing.
his fist against my skull—again. and again.

i carried his child and his rage at the same time.
eight months pregnant.
cleaning houses while hiding bruises.
a ghost of myself.

days before our daughter was born,
he put me in the hospital.
then totaled my car.

but the most hollowing act wasn’t the fists.
wasn’t the strangling.
wasn’t the blood.

it was when he spit in my face.

inches away,
with our daughter still inside me.

because to spit at something is to say:
you are nothing.

and if i was nothing—
i was something that could be erased.

so i ran.
back to my father’s house.
a place where i was never a child.
still just a thing.

and it was just as brutal as i remembered.

but there’s her.
and i would not let her know the childhood i had run from.

so i went home.
to the place i bought alone.
just in case i needed to escape.
not sure how i would survive—
only that i had to.

because they fucking hated me.

they tried to kill me.
they tried to break me.
they tried to make me disappear.

but i am still here.

and my daughter?
she will never ask:
"why does he fucking hate me?"

they tried to fucking kill me.
and they fucking failed.