When the storm finally spent itself,
I found no revelation –
only a steadier breath,
a room returned to its own silence,
and the knowledge that I had not broken.
Survival is not a victory march.
It is the slow reclaiming of ordinary days,
the quiet refusal to be defined
by someone else’s disappearance,
by the echo they leave behind.
No epiphany waits in the wreckage,
no sudden light to bless the aftermath.
But there is a truth that arrives
only when the noise is gone:
the truth of still being here.
I do not rise from the ruins transformed.
I rise because I can,
because the ground beneath me is mine again,
because the storm took what it could,
and left me standing still.
This is the self that remains:
not triumphant,
not remade,
but intact—
and that is enough.