Where Love Heals

I used to think
falling in love again
would mean another person.

Another hand to hold.
Another name
softening in my mouth.

I never imagined
it might be something gentler.

The way sunlight spills
across the kitchen floor.

There was no defining moment.

No morning when I woke
to find the grief had packed its things
and slipped away.

No single day
when everything stopped hurting.

Life simply began
asking me to come back.

Softly, at first.

In coffee that stayed warm
long enough to finish.

In books that kept me up
past midnight.

In laughter so sudden
and so full
I forgot, for a moment,
that I had ever been sad.

In making plans
for a future
I had once stopped believing
belonged to me.

And somewhere between
missing you
and realizing
how deeply I had missed myself,

I started noticing things again.

The moon.

A song worth playing twice.

Maybe healing was never supposed to mean
falling out of love with you.

Maybe it was learning
that loving you
didn’t have to mean
losing me.

Maybe it was remembering
that you were never
the only beautiful thing
I was capable of loving.

There are still days
when the past finds me.

But it doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Home is becoming
the life in front of me.

And lately,
the world has been looking
a little beautiful again.

The mornings feel softer.
The music sounds louder.
I catch myself making plans
without wondering
who will be there
to see them through.

And perhaps
this is what falling in love again
was always meant to be

not finding someone new,

but returning, slowly,
to everything I stopped noticing
when my heart was somewhere else.

The sunlight.
The flowers.
The music.
The moon.

My own life.

My own heart.

Myself.

And for the first time
in a very long time,

tomorrow doesn’t feel
like something I have to survive.

It feels like somewhere
I want to go.

Jacque Michele