The ladder I climbed for years
turned out to lean on a crumbling wall;
every rung a quiet bargain
paid in compromise and pain.
I stepped away...
before the wall succumbed to gravity.
Now I live in a house built of borrowed strength
my parents’ hands still warm
in the corners of unopened boxes,
their faith folded between kitchen plates.
The new work is smaller than my hunger once was,
but it arrives each morning like bread —
plain, sufficient, undeservedly kind.
Love, meanwhile, dissolved like ink in rain.
I had always known the letters were wrong,
but I kept reading...
hoping meaning would rearrange itself.
It never did.
My body has begun speaking in accidents —
an angry staircase breaking my ankle,
the road rising to make me fall,
the sky tilting when I move ahead alone.
Still...
somewhere beneath the bruises,
a stubborn pulse continues its rehearsal.
Winter keeps misplacing me,
yet I notice...
the trees are already swaying
ready to embrace the joy of spring.
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