Today is a day
like so many before
I wake up with breath in my chest
and some kind of peace
stitched into my ribcage.
The kind you don’t notice
until it replaces chaos.
I’m grateful.
For the dirt under my nails
from rebuilding myself
again
and again.
For the calm that comes
from doing the next right thing
on days I’d rather vanish.
But grief still knocks.
Not like a storm anymore
more like a soft tap at the side door
while I’m cooking dinner
for one.
I don’t want to go back to who I was.
God, no.
But I’d be lying
if I said I didn’t sometimes wish
I could’ve brought him with me.
Wish I could’ve grown
without burning it all down.
But I didn’t.
I jumped.
No parachute.
No second guess.
Just splinters and sirens and
the slow realization
that I was the wreckage.
And now
I can’t ask to be taken back.
I don’t deserve that.
I don’t expect it.
What I can do
what I am doing
is building a raft.
A boat.
A damn life support system
out of scrap wood and sober days.
Because this version of me
the one with shaking hands and
too many regrets
he deserves to live.
To get old.
To make it.
So I let go of the snapshots.
The what if we’d lasted
and who I thought I’d grow old with.
I tuck them away
somewhere soft
but not sacred.
Because the people I hurt
don’t owe me a thing.
And love doesn’t erase the hurt
it can only honor it.
With space.
With silence.
With acceptance
that arrives
some days
only after a breakdown
and some coffee.
I can’t go back.
I’m not sure I would, even if I could.
But I won’t forget, either.
Because that boy
the one who lost everything
was me.
And that life,
for all its mess,
had love in it.
Real love.
And I’ll carry the good
like a stone in my pocket
heavy, grounding,
and always there
when I need to remember
who I was,
who I lost,
and who I get to become.