Openings in Disguise

The storm arrived like a festival,
warm rain clapping rooftops, wind singing praise.
Pain wore confetti, unbearable only later,
when I learned it was weighting my bones,
teaching patience the way waves teach stone:
by returning, again and again,
until strength forgets it was once resistance.

Rejection handed me flowers and a gentle no,
a door closed softly enough to sound kind.
Failure smiled the same way,
told me to pause, to doubt, to bow my head.
But each refusal bent the road away from cliffs,
each stumble marked the path forward,
progress disguised as falling into wisdom.

Resilience did not arrive as courage.
It came as showing up exhausted,
as cracked hands still gripping the rope.
It looked like bending without the music of applause,
like learning the shape of the ground well enough to stand again.
It was survival misnamed as endurance.

I once tried to steer the weather,
to manage hearts, outcomes, betrayals.
Loyal faces fractured without warning,
trust splitting like ice beneath my feet.
There I learned the border of my power:
I could not command the sky,
only strengthen the spine that faced it.

Loss emptied rooms with surgical silence,
heartbreak pressing me inward like winter.
Hardship stripped comfort down to the studs,
trained me in the gym of sameness and grit.
What emerged was quieter, true r,
self‑compassion finding its pulse,
a character tempered by closed doors
that were, all along, openings in disguise.