Breath Over Collapse
It leaves traces in the body long after it leaves the room
Some of them are soft, like flowers pressed between pages
Just the way I like them
Like light that lingers on walls after the sun is gone
Forming the most perfect silhouette
But not all are kind; others are heavier
Like coffins we never asked to carry
Built from endings we did not choose
Sealed with everything we could not say
I keep living between both
My love sinks sometimes, dragging whole seasons downward
But hope,
Hope refuses to learn how to drown
And I have started to understand that memory is not always mercy
It can become a place you go to visit
Or a place you never leave
So I am now learning to hold what happened
Without letting it become the death of me
To remember to survive the remembering
To choose life even when memory calls me back
To everything I lost
To choose breath
Over collapse
Love.
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