My phone learned
the weight
of his name.
Not because of love.
Because every vibration
asked the same question.
“How much of yourself
will you surrender today?”
Some days,
none.
Some days,
more than I realized.
Until one evening,
while talking to my dad,
the screen lit up
again.
I searched
the conversation
for the sentence
that caused the storm.
I never found one.
Only weather.
So I watched
the messages arrive
like lightning
that believed
it had invented thunder.
It hadn’t.
My life already knew storms.
A little girl
whose heartbeat
never came home.
Little boys
I would spend years
fighting to protect.
Courtrooms.
Affidavits.
Missed summers.
None of those things
fit inside
a text message.
Neither did I.
So I became
something
the conversation
couldn’t understand.
I stopped trying
to convince someone
who had already decided
who I was.
And somewhere
between the last notification
and the first quiet morning,
I discovered
peace
doesn’t always arrive
because someone apologized.
Sometimes
it arrives
because you finally realize
you don’t have to answer.
Leave a Reply