I didn't come back
with anything to teach.
The stories people want
move too cleanly -
they end with meaning,
What I brought home
was heavier than that.
Or maybe just harder to place.
Some days behave normally.
Mail arrives.
A neighbor waves.
The body goes where it’s told.
This is the strangest part -
how little resistance the world offers
to continuing.
I walk through it carrying faces
that don’t show up in mirrors.
They surface instead
in the pause before speech,
in the way I count steps
and don’t know why.
There were moments -
not heroic, not terrible -
just ordinary enough
to last.
Someone handed me water.
Someone missed a step.
Someone said my name
and I answered.
I still think about that.
People say you survived
as if it were an accomplishment,
as if breath were earned
by something other than chance.
I don’t correct them.
It feels like too much work
to explain the math.
At night the body remembers first.
Sleep comes carefully,
like an animal that doesn’t trust
an open hand.
When it leaves,
it leaves everything open.
I’ve learned how to stand
in a room without explaining myself.
How to listen
without expecting relief.
How to let a morning happen
without asking what it’s for.
This isn’t forgiveness.
It isn’t peace.
It’s just the condition
of staying.
If there’s honor anywhere,
it’s in remembering -
not loudly,
not publicly,
but steadily enough
that nothing slips.
I carry what I can.
I don’t set anything down.
The dead don’t ask for tribute.
They ask for accuracy.
So I move through the day
as carefully as I know how,
aware that being here
isn’t a victory -
just a responsibility
I haven’t figured out
how to refuse.
GBS jr
1998
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