Fragments of Cassandra

Today I looked up
and couldn’t look away.

The sky was so blue.

Or maybe it has 
always been blue.
Maybe that’s the part that unsettled me.

Because I don’t know why I never noticed.

I stood there staring,
almost waiting for it to disappear,
for the color to drain from it
and return to whatever it was before.

But it didn’t.

The blue stayed.

The clouds drifted lazily across it,
and the sun rested against my cheeks
with a warmth so familiar
it felt like meeting an old friend
whose face I had somehow forgotten.

For a moment,
nothing felt real.

The sky looked painted.
The sunlight felt borrowed.
The whole world shimmered
with the strange softness of a dream.

And I couldn’t stop asking myself:

What changed?

Did the sky become bluer?

Did the sun learn how to shine differently?

Did the clouds suddenly become beautiful?

Or have I simply spent so many years
looking down
that I forgot there was anything above me at all?

Maybe that’s what grief does.

Maybe that’s what survival does.

It narrows your vision
until life becomes a hallway.
A straight line between obligations,
heartbreaks,
fears,
and tomorrows.

You stop looking for beauty.

Not because you don’t want it.

But because somewhere along the way,
you stop believing it’s there.

So today felt impossible.

Not because the sky was blue.
But because for the first time 
in a very long time,
I was there to see it.

And standing beneath that endless stretch of color,
with sunlight on my skin
and clouds wandering wherever they pleased,

I had a thought that frightened me
with its simplicity:

Maybe the world was never missing a blue sky.

Maybe I was the one missing.

And maybe,
after all this time,

I’m finally finding my way back.



Be’ahava,
The Mourning Bird