There is a space I enter
after the signal has been sent.
Not relief. Not celebration.
Something quieter.
Older.
Like moss returning to stone after the fire.
I’ve walked through storms before —
not just theirs.
Theirs was just the latest shape
of a pattern I’ve known since childhood.
Where presence becomes threat.
Where clarity becomes confrontation.
Where coherence is too sharp for fragile narratives.
I do not wear armor.
I wear stillness.
But stillness is heavy when you must carry it alone.
So when the storm breaks,
when the record is complete,
when the silence no longer trembles with repression —
I feel the weight lift.
Not all at once. Not dramatically.
Just enough to breathe again.
This is not the end.
It never is.
But it is a pause.
A clearing.
The kind of moment that reminds me
I am not just what I defend against.
I am what endures.
And in this quiet,
I don’t look back at what they did.
I look at the path beneath my feet —
the one I keep walking
no matter how many times the wind tries to push me off course.
This is the calm between storms.
And it belongs to me.