It has been a year since the night everything went quiet inside me. I keep thinking about how healing is supposed to look like movement — forward, upward — yet I feel suspended. I move through rooms that look the same, I sleep on the same bed and stare up at ceiling. I eat breakfast with the same hands that once refused to move. SHE asks if I'm sleeping. HE pretends not to hear the question meant for both of us. The calendar keeps its count the same.
Some wounds learn to live indoors.
They grow furniture and manners.
I remember being eleven and thinking birthdays were the most magical celebrations. That every year meant something would bloom. Somewhere between then and now my house grew cobwebs and I was tangled in it lovingly. Love became something measured by survival. SHE still calls him "HIM" like an apology she can't stop repeating. I still answer, though sometimes the words crumble before they reach my mouth.
The days blur. I tell myself I am better, that living quietly counts as progress. Yet some mornings the body still feels borrowed, a disgusting burden I have been carrying.. I water the plants, open the curtains, act like the sun is an invitation.
It isn't hope that wakes me,
just habit wearing its favorite mask.
The normality is comforting. Washing dishes, feeding the stray dogs, answering texts with half-smiles. It's strange how the ordinary becomes holy after almost losing it. I think of that night sometimes. The stillness before it still lays somewhere in my room. When the world narrowed to a heartbeat and a breath I didn't take.
Then, somehow, it widened again.
I woke, and everything was quieter. Another three days the house behaved like a stranger trying to be kind. But old habits die hard. I learned that silence is a temporary mercy, and there was no remedy for my loving home.
Survival is maintenance.
Months passed. I taught myself not to search for apology where there will never be one. SHE still smiles like she's balancing two lives on her tongue. I don't hate her for staying; I just wish she hadn't asked me to make peace with it. I've stopped expecting understanding some time ago. Instead, I write. The page listens without interruption.
At night, I trace the outline of who I used to be. There's a hollowness there, but it's starting to fill with something quieter than pain. Maybe that's growth or maybe it's fatigue. Either way, it feels real.
THE PAST learns to speak softer in your ear at some point.
Tonight I step outside. The air tastes metallic in my lungs like last October. The sky looks unchanged and I just enough to notice the small, living things. A dog barking somewhere. The wind nudging the leaves into motion. For a moment I let it all happen without asking why.