After the Storm

You are still here.

That is the first fact.

The storm passed through your life
and took what it could,
but something in you remained standing.

Not untouched.
Not unchanged.

But standing.

There were days when silence filled the rooms
so completely
you thought nothing would grow there again.

And yet something did.

Slowly.

Like a small light
kept alive by habit more than hope.

Morning returned in its ordinary way.
Birds kept rising from the trees.
The world, stubborn as ever,
went on.

You learned a different kind of strength then.

Not the loud kind.
Not the kind that conquers.

The quieter one.

The strength that holds together
what is left
and begins again from there.

Pain does not disappear.

It changes shape.

It becomes the knowledge
that life is fragile
and therefore worth protecting.

Even the scars carry information.

They remind you
what the body can survive,
what the heart can endure.

And sometimes
in the middle of an ordinary day
you feel it clearly:

the strange privilege
of being alive
after the moment
that might have ended everything.

So you walk forward.

Not victorious.
Not defeated.

Simply alive.

And that, you discover,
is its own kind of light.