A Country for Grief

There are places
that ask nothing of us.

They do not ask us
to explain our scars,
or justify the silence
we have carried for years.

They simply open
like an old olive tree
making room
for one more weary traveller.

Perhaps that
is what a safe place is.

Not a place
where sorrow disappears,

but a place
where sorrow
is no longer ashamed
to speak.

The sea does not hurry me.

The mountains
do not ask
why I waited so long.

The evening bells
do not demand belief.

Even the stones,
worn smooth
by centuries of footsteps,
seem to understand
that every life
contains a burden
too heavy for words.

So I sit.

I let the tears
arrive without apology.

I stop calling them weakness.

I stop trying
to become someone
who has never been wounded.

For a little while
I belong
to the wind,
to the light
on the water,
to friends
who ask only
whether I would like
another cup of coffee.

And in that ordinary kindness
my grief
finds permission
to breathe.

Nothing is solved.

The losses remain.

The years
cannot be returned.

But the heart,
like dry earth
receiving its first rain,
begins to soften.

Healing,
I discover,
is not forgetting.

It is finding
one place in the world
where sorrow
does not have to hide.

And once
it no longer hides,

it slowly learns
that it can also
live.