Fragments of Cassandra

There is a kind of sadness
that arrives without footsteps.

No catastrophe.
No shattered glass.
No name you can point toward
and say,
“There.
That is what wounded me.”

Just a quiet heaviness
resting inside the ribs
like winter settling into an abandoned house.

And somehow
you feel everything
and nothing at all.

Heavy,
but hollow.
Lost,
but too tired to search for directions.
Dark,
but strangely calm inside the dark
because at least it is familiar.

You have lived here before.

In this numbness
where tears no longer fall
because the body has learned
how to survive floods
by becoming stone.

And maybe that is the cruelest part:

not the sadness itself,
but how comforting it becomes
when your heart no longer remembers
what it feels like
to live without it.

But even this
does not make you broken.

Some seasons of life
are not meant to be conquered.
Some wounds do not ask for answers,
only patience.

And sometimes healing
is not rising,
or fighting,
or forcing yourself to feel whole again.

Sometimes all you can do
is sit quietly beside the emptiness
and let yourself breathe through it.

And that is still surviving.


With Love,
Cassandra