Rising Through

As I drown, and the light fades,

there is no map for this descent

only the weight of moments

I cannot hold steady,

slipping through me

like handfuls of cold rain.

I thought the world would wait,

but the clocks keep moving,

their hands stitching hours together

as if nothing has been torn.

I drift beneath their rhythm,

trying to remember

how breath once felt easy.

There is a silence that lives here,

not empty,

but heavy enough to bend my spine.

It hums through every rib,

a reminder that love’s shadow

can take any shape,

even this endless dark.

And then

not suddenly,

but slow as thawing ice,

a thread of warmth unspools inside me.

I do not rise with triumph,

but with the smallest flicker

of something unbroken.

It is quiet, stubborn,

like the pulse beneath a scar

that refuses to fade.

I surface, not as who I was,

but as someone

who has learned to breathe

in the hollow spaces,

someone who can carry

both the ache and the light,

without letting either

drown the other.