Where the Darkness Was

At first, it pulsed inside me—
a tumor of other people’s grief,
a black hole of their unspoken rage.
They threw their pain into me
as if I were the ocean,
as if I could make it disappear.

But darkness is not infinite,
only dense.
And one day, I grew tired
of orbiting their sorrow.
So I walked into the rain,
the wind,
the music of trees,
and I said to the storm:
Take what was never mine.

The water didn’t argue.
It reached into my ribs,
washed through the caverns
where shame had nested,
and carried the old voices away—
the ones that said, You must hold this.

I filled the empty space with sound:
a drumbeat of my own heart,
a song that rose from the soles of my feet,
a laugh that bent sunlight into motion.

Now, where the darkness was,
there is rhythm,
there is color,
there is wind learning how to dance.

And when the world brings me
its ache again,
I listen,
but I don’t swallow.
I sing instead,
and let the echoes do the healing.