Bruises in Disguise as Constellations

Some nights

The body forgets it is a body.

and remembers it is sky.

All the dark patches,

the places where the world

landed too hard,

begin to glow in patterns

No doctor knows how to read.

A thumbprint on your upper arm

is suddenly Orion,

belt skewed but still insisting

on pointing somewhere.

The tender bloom at your knee—

You call it an accident

with the coffee table,

But it has the exact shape

of a question you never asked

and still trip over.

You stand in the bathroom light,

shirt half-lifted,

cataloguing small galaxies:

an old impact at the ribs

fading from violent purple

to polite yellow,

a crescent on your thigh

like a moon that didn’t make it

to the sky.

You tell yourself,

“It’s nothing,”

the way we talk about meteors—

just rocks,

just friction,

just a brief bright hurt

we pretend the atmosphere

can handle.

No one teaches you

That skin keeps archives.

It files collisions under “normal,”

stamps them with dates

that only your nervous system

can decode.

But look how your body

has learned the language of survival:

how bruises bloom,

peak,

and then quietly pack their light

back into the bloodstream.

How every mark

Is the universe saying,

“You were here when this happened,

And you are still here

now that it has passed.”

Sometimes you mistake

a fresh constellation

for a personal failure—

as if gravity were your fault,

as if every time something hits you

It proves you should be

smaller.

But stars are born

in pressure and collapsed dust,

and you, too,

have turned more than one impact

into a lantern.

Think of the bruise

on your heart

that taught you to read

Silence like weather.

Think of the one

on your trust

that made you install

better doors.

Think of the way

Your laughter sounds

the morning after grief—

how it limps a little,

but still crosses the room.

When the mirror feels cruel,

Turn off the overhead light.

Let only the dim lamp

near the bed stay on.

Watch how the darker patches

soften into starfields,

how your unevenness

becomes a sky nobody else

has seen this close.

Trace them with a gentle finger,

not as flaws

But as coordinates:

Here is where you broke

and did not stay broken.

Here is where you were struck

and did not become the strike.

Here is where the night

sat on your skin

and eventually got up again.

If someone ever sees you

in this half-light

and calls your marks ugly,

Remember:

Not everyone is meant

to be an astronomer.

Some of us

are both telescope

and terrain,

learning, slowly,

to love the way we shine

in places

We were told

to hide.

Bruises are temporary.

Constellations change.

But the sky—

The sky is permanent.

So are you.