After Everything

You do not say the whole story anymore.
It is too large
and has too many rooms without light.

Instead, you go outside.

There is a morning
that does not ask you to explain yourself.
A small wind
moving through the trees
as if it has always known your name.

You stand there longer than necessary.

It is not that the past is gone.
It follows, as weather follows,
arriving without warning,
leaving without apology.

But here is also the bird
working the edge of the grass,
intent on its ordinary hunger.
Here is the light
touching the ground
and then lifting again.

You begin, slowly,
to understand something simpler:

that the world
does not require your history
in order to receive you.

You breathe.

No one takes this from you.
Not the ones who turned away.
Not the voices that named you wrongly.
Not the long years
when even your own body
felt like a difficult country.

There is only this:
the air entering,
the air leaving.

And a question,
which you do not have to answer today:

what will you do
with the life
that is still here?