“She Smiles Again”
She walked through mirrors cracked with shame,
A silent ghost without a name,
Each footstep echoed fears unspoken—
A soul in chains, a heart half-broken.
The whispers came like winds through trees,
Dark demons clothed in sweet decrees,
“You are not enough,” they’d hiss and sing,
And she believed each cursed thing.
She searched for light in phantom hands,
In shallow love and shifting sands,
She drank from wells that ran bone dry
And gave her laughter up to lie.
The night grew long, the world grew thin,
The war outside matched one within,
Her own reflection wouldn’t stay—
Just flicker, fade, and slip away.
But one day, with a whisper’s grace
And breathless stillness at her core,
She felt the weight begin to break—
A trembling heart that chose to wake.
She spoke a truth the dark once knew
It shattered shadows, cut right through.
She cast the demons to the ground,
Their voices lost in freedom’s sound.
The chains that held her fell like ash,
No longer bound by haunted past,
She rose—no longer just survived,
But bloomed, and burned, and danced, alive.
Now morning wraps around her skin,
With sunlight melting scars within,
And though the dark still knows her name,
It cannot steal her light again.
She laughs like rivers freed from stone,
No longer frightened, not alone.
The girl who once believed the lies
Now walks with fire in her eyes.
She smiles again—wide, wild, and true.
The storm is gone.
The sky is blue.
She is free. And she is new.
– Homie the Bear
*In honor of Melanie’s sobriety and recovery.
