There Are Mornings

There are mornings
when joy feels like betrayal.

It slips through the blinds
without asking
whether I am ready
to see anything
bright.

It knocks softly
like light insisting on entry
and I turn my face away
because how dare it
enter a room
you no longer occupy.

The world did not pause.
It did not lower its voice.
It did not dim its colors
out of respect.

Traffic lights change.
Coffee brews.
Children laugh in parking lots.
Cashiers still ask,
“How are you today?”

And I stand there
holding out-of-season mangos and a heartbeat
that feels too loud
for a body that has known silence.

I rise …
not because I want to,
but because the clock insists.

I dress in something acceptable.
I place a smile on my face
like a pressed shirt
creased just enough
to look intentional.

It fits.
It passes inspection.

No one sees
that underneath
I am measuring the day
in survivable increments.

Just get through the meeting.
Just answer the email.
Just return the call.
Just breathe until lunch.
Just breathe until evening.

I practice normalcy
like a second language.

Yes, I will attend the meeting.
Yes, I will answer the phone.
Yes, I will show up
to the birthday party
and clap when the candles flicker.

My hands remember the motion.
My mouth remembers the shape of a smile.
The smile does its job.
It curves.
It reassures.
It convinces the room
that I am present.

But presence is not the same as wholeness.

Inside is a room
where the furniture has been removed
and every footstep echoes.

Sometimes
I laugh.

And the sound startles me.

It rises up
uninvited,
almost sweet
and for a suspended second
I forget.

Then remembrance crashes in
and I feel disloyal
for having tasted something warm
in a world that took you.

How can I hold both
— grief in one palm
and joy in the other —
without feeling like I am dropping you?

They say life goes on.
As if it has a choice.

But continuing feels like
walking forward
while dragging a shadow
that refuses to shorten.

I brush my teeth.
I fold laundry.
I sign documents.
I make dinner.
I even say,
“I’m fine.”

Because what else is there to say?

That I am walking through water
while everyone else
moves through air?
That every ordinary act
feels like evidence
that I am surviving
without you?

There is guilt in that.

A quiet whisper:
If you loved them enough,
wouldn’t you collapse?
Wouldn’t you refuse the sun?
Wouldn’t you freeze time
out of loyalty?

But the body insists on breath.
The heart
— traitor that it is —
keeps beating.

So I step outside.

The sky is offensively blue.
The air does not ask permission
to fill my lungs.

And I stand there
suspended between worlds

one where you existed
and one where you do not

trying to learn
how to inhabit both
without dissolving.

Joy now is fragile.
It arrives cracked at the edges.
It tastes faintly of salt.

Not the absence of sorrow.
Not a replacement.

Just a small, trembling permission
to keep moving
wearing a smile
that holds the day together
even while carrying you
in the hollowed-out space
where grief
and love
refuse
to separate.

— originally posted February 11, 2026, on Facebook.