The morning came quiet,
as if it had nothing to prove.
Light fell through the window.
Dust drifted.
Coffee was bitter.
It didn’t matter.
The past sat in the corner,
the way a chair does
when no one’s using it.
You remember it once held you.
It doesn’t anymore.
There were names once.
There were voices.
There were nights you held onto too tightly,
as if they’d vanish before you could
feel them right.
They did anyway.
You burned old letters.
You threw out shirts that still smelled of
something you can’t name now.
It wasn’t love.
Maybe it was need.
Or habit.
You carried those things
like stones in your coat.
You sank.
You thought it was depth.
Then one day you stopped carrying them.
There was no ceremony.
No great cry to heaven.
You just stopped.
And it was quiet.
The new comes soft.
It doesn’t ask for applause.
It’s the air you didn’t notice was fresher
until you stopped choking.
A woman at the diner smiles
and it doesn’t break you.
You smile back.
That’s all.
It’s enough.
You buy apples that aren’t bruised.
You walk farther than you used to.
You speak when you mean it
and don’t when you don’t.
The days stretch out
like a road without warning signs.
You’re not looking for exits anymore.
There are no ghosts in your bed.
No wars in your chest.
You sleep.
You wake.
You do it again.
The past didn’t die.
It just stopped asking you to follow it.
You let it leave.
And you stayed.
The new is not loud.
It is not proud.
It is a man
who keeps walking,
even when the trail disappears.
There is no map.
There is no need.
There is only the sky,
and the weightlessness
of now.
Soon…
Broken Author 