After

The first thing I said when the door closed

was not a prayer, not a confession,

just a small breath,

a shape in the air that sounded almost like thanks.

We have been carrying days like stones,

dragging them down sterile corridors,

counting fluorescent bulbs instead of stars.

Too much has been measured in heartbeats

that were not our own.

And yet,

the coffee still warms the hands,

the sky still shifts colors without asking permission.

Even the uneven sidewalk holds us up

when our knees would rather fold.

Something breaks open:

not grief itself,

but the grip it held on the throat.

And suddenly the ordinary things,

the crooked blinds,

the uneven laughter of strangers,

the echo of footsteps leaving a building,

feel like a mercy we never expected.

We are alive enough to stumble,

alive enough to trip into light,

alive enough to mumble gratitude

for the terrible, dazzling fact

that endings

still leave room for mornings.

Postscript:

This free verse poem explores grief recovery and the quiet resilience that follows loss. It’s about moving through hospital corridors, funerals, and heavy silences, and finding, against all odds, a fragile but profound gratitude.