Grateful: Came Back From the Dead Wearing Lightning
I’m grateful —
not cute, not calm, not clean,
but feral‑in‑the‑veins, holy‑obscene,
gratitude dripping like gasoline
on every bridge I burned at seventeen.
I’m grateful like a woman who flirted with death,
with a.5 BAC on her breath,
kissed the void, tasted its depth,
and rose up laughing like,
“Baby, I’m not done yet.”
I’m grateful like a sinner turned scholar,
a phoenix in a collar,
a data‑science baller
who codes her comeback hotter than any shot in a water‑downed bar.
I’m grateful for my kids —
these miracles I made
while I was half‑alive, half‑frayed,
yet they grew into legends
even when I was a ghost in the shade.
They’re proof that love can bloom
in the ruins I once laid.
I’m grateful for Aunt Mary —
my prayer‑slinging mercenary,
the woman who held my name steady
when my pulse wasn’t ready.
I’m grateful for Mom,
for my brother’s calm,
for my special‑needs sister
whose love hits like a psalm —
pure, unshaken,
the kind of devotion
that never breaks,
never fakes,
never leaves
even when the world quakes.
I’m grateful for every blackout night,
every coma‑kissed fight,
every time my soul slipped out of sight —
because the darkness taught me
how to bite my way back
into the light.
I’m grateful for the ones who stayed,
and the ones who fled,
the ones who prayed,
and the ones who left me for dead —
every lover, every liar,
every ghost in my head.
They carved me into a woman
who walks like fire
and rises like she’s newly wed
to her own damn power instead.
I’m grateful for sobriety —
not the soft kind,
but the erotic, volcanic, spine‑aligned,
sweat‑on‑the‑lip,
hips‑in‑the‑grip
rebirth of choosing myself
over the poison that once made me slip.
I’m grateful for me —
the wild one,
the undone,
the comeback spun
from the ashes of every almost‑gone sun.
The scientist of survival,
the priestess of revival,
the woman whose pulse is a rival
to anything that ever tried
to take her arrival.
This is my gratitude list —
raw, ruthless, kissed by the abyss,
a resurrection wrapped in a twist,
a love letter to every version of me
that refused to be dismissed.
If it sounds crazy,
if it sounds erotic,
if it sounds like a riot in cosmic rhyme —
good.
Because gratitude like mine
was never meant
to sound polite.