Glory To The Brave

There was a time when I could feel the edges of things clearly. Now everything bleeds into everything else, like watercolor left too long in the rain. I press my palm against my chest some mornings just to remember there's something still moving underneath, something that insists on continuing despite my silence. The photographs don't change but I do. Every time I look at them I'm further away from the person who knew those faces by touch instead of memory. They become stories I tell myself about a life I think I had, in a language I'm slowly forgetting how to speak. I've learned that loss is not an event but a room you wake up in. The walls are always the same distance away. The door is always in the same place. You can memorize every crack in the ceiling but that doesn't mean you know how to leave. Some days I don't even remember trying. There's a specific weight to watching yourself disappear. The slow subtraction of response, the way you stop reaching for the phone, the way laughter becomes something you observe in others like a documentary about a foreign country you'll never visit. It doesn't really get easier; you just get better at carrying it. The weight doesn't change. Your back just learns to bend in new ways. Your hands learn to hold onto nothing and call it strength. You learn to mistake endurance for healing. So glory to the brave, to everyone who wakes up and takes up the weight again. To those who've made homes in the shaded places where light doesn't reach but somehow, we still exist. To the ones who keep moving through the grey, not because they believe in destinations anymore, but because stopping feels like the final betrayal. Glory, Glory to the brave.