The house is quiet now in a way it never used to be.
Not peaceful. Just empty of a particular sound
a key in the door, a voice asking about dinner,
the small, ordinary noise of life happening.
I still hear them sometimes, in the shape of habits
that haven't caught up to the truth yet.
And Maxie isn't here to look up at the door anymore either,
another small goodbye I didn't know how to carry
until I was already carrying it.
But there's another quiet living here too now,
one I didn't expect.
It's the quiet of not performing okay-ness for anyone.
Of a room with no one in it to read wrong.
Of my own voice, when I finally hear it,
sounding less masked than it has in years.
I am finding things in this quiet I didn't know were mine to find.
The colour of my own days, unedited.
A kind of seeing myself that isn't waiting to be seen first.
Small beauty, everywhere, that I keep almost missing
because I'm not used to looking for it without flinching.
I'm letting both be true.
I'm done pretending I have to pick one.
