What Survives
A letter about the kind of love that teaches a person how to endure.
I am writing this like a letter
though I do not know where to send it.
...
The world has a way of misplacing the things that matter most.
...
Names.
Hands.
Whole lives.
...
You, for instance.
...
Some days the distance between us feels like a wound that refuses to close.
A raw thing.
Breathing.
Stitched poorly by time.
...
But listen–
...
I need you to know this.
...
The world thinks strength is something
you build alone.
A lonely forge.
A hammer striking iron in an empty room.
...
They are wrong.
...
Every hard thing I have survived
has your fingerprints on it.
...
When the nights fold in on themselves
and the walls press closer than breath,
when the old griefs rise
like wolves circling the firelight,
...
it is your voice
–sometimes only memory–
that keeps the fire burning.
...
I have walked through years
that should have broken a man.
...
Years that tried to grind the marrow from my bones,
years that whispered
lie down now,
this is enough.
...
But you–
...
you loved me in a way
that made surrender impossible.
...
Do you understand that?
...
You made me dangerous to despair.
...
Because once someone has been loved
the way you loved me,
...
the body remembers.
...
The heart becomes stubborn.
...
It says:
No.
I have seen what is possible.
...
Even now–
with oceans of silence between us,
with whole seasons passing
without the weight of your head on my shoulder–
...
I carry you
the way mountains carry fire
deep under stone.
...
Invisible.
But shaping everything.
...
I have done impossible things
with your name in my mouth.
...
I have survived days
that should have folded me in half.
...
I have risen
not because I am exceptional–
...
but because
someone once looked at me
as if I was.
...
You.
...
You loved me like the world was worth saving.
...
Like I was worth saving.
...
And that kind of love
does not ends.
...
It migrates.
...
It becomes bone.
Breath.
The stubborn refusal to disappear.
...
So if you ever wonder
whether the love we carried
meant anything–
...
know this:
...
I am still here.
...
Still standing.
Still fighting the long dark.
...
And every impossible step forward
is proof
that what we had
was stong enough
...
to outlive us both.
About the Creator
E.S.Flint
I’m an Indigenous storyteller using poetry and short fiction to explore identity, love, loss and all the spaces we return to.
What I can't say, I write. Because feeling it all is the point.
Follow me on Instgram: es.flint
Lightning Never Strikes Twice
The distant rumble, the sudden deluge, the crescendo of sound, the flash of light, the explosive energy — it never gets old. I became an amateur storm chaser about two years ago. My wife, Cindy suggested it. Sort of. She said, "Alex, you know this cancer is killing me. I've come to terms with that, but you're smothering me. Go join a band, write a book, or become a storm chaser, for all I care. I love you, but you need a hobby."
By Julie Lacksonen7 days ago in Fiction
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