The Way the Body Remembers

Cliché: “Time heals all wounds.” (Irritation: It implies passivity, ignoring the ache, the effort, the mess of healing.) Better Version: Healing is not the passing of time— it is the choosing to keep walking with the limp. Poem They say time heals all wounds, but time does nothing without your hands in the dirt. It just sits there, ticks forward, waits for you to move. Healing is not forgetting. It’s waking up and feeding the dog, even when your ribs still echo where the grief pressed in. It’s stitching yourself back together with thread made of old laughter and apologies you’ll never get. It’s watering the plants even though you once killed every green thing in the house because the light hurt your eyes. It’s how you flinch when someone touches your shoulder like they used to— and how you breathe through it anyway. Some days, healing looks like coffee left to go cold because you finally called someone back. Some days, it’s just not crying when their name comes up. You walk differently now. Yes. But still— you walk.