Silver on the Floorboards

At every turning point, you were there.

When the walls held anger

and the floors kept secrets,

I found your light in the crack of the curtain

and believed it meant someone was listening.

You saw the girl who tiptoed through shadows,

who learned to smile like survival—

to hold her breath during thunder,

to make silence a kind of armor.

You saw her grow into a woman

who still counts the stars before speaking.

You were there when I said hello

and goodbye to my firstborn son.

I lay in that hospital bed,

my heart split open,

and looked out the window to find you there,

a witness in the dark,

steady as grief,

soft as a hand that could not hold mine.

Grief filled the rooms,

loneliness lingered in the corners.

Night after night, you returned.

The waves still come, even now.

You showed me I could survive the dark,

because even at night, there is light.

When I became a mother again,

you hung low over the crib,

a silver eye that never blinked.

You watched me rock my babies

through teething and fevers,

through the kind of nights

when a body learns to hum instead of cry.

You were there when my marriage ended,

when the world tilted beneath me,

and those vows disintegrated.

Still, you rose, bright and full,

as if to say, look how the light returns

even when everything else falls away.

And when I began again,

in the little house that smelled of paint and hope,

you found me through the bare windows,

silver on the floorboards,

gentle on the walls,

a reminder that starting over

can bloom into peace I never knew before.

Now the years lean softer.

My children find you too—

their faces half in light, half in learning.

And I whisper thanks,

for all the nights you kept me company,

for being proof that even from far away,

love can still shine steady.