my shoulders, they used to hold so much, not just the leaning and the lifting but the sheer weight of what felt like an entire universe strapped to my frame, a constant, low thrum of almost-pain that just became my ordinary, and now sometimes, when i breathe, truly breathe, there's this unclenching, a kind of unraveling beneath my skin, almost frightening in its sudden freedom, like the ghost of a sensation where a permanent burden used to be. that feeling, it’s a different kind of pressure against my skin, not the relentless expectation but just the humid summer air moving around me, touching me, and it makes me remember that other person, the one who lived inside that perpetually braced body, the one who didn’t know how to just BE in a moment, to simply feel the breeze without mentally sorting through a checklist of next tasks, a person who might have looked at the rose bush now bursting with color outside and only seen another thing to tend, another obligation, but now it’s just pure, extravagant JOY, a riot of petals against the red earth of virginia, a defiant answer to all those seasons of bare branches. and the memory of mom saying my name, it’s not a hollow space opening up anymore, it’s a deep reverberation, a resonance that settles into the very marrow of my bones, a strange, undeniable truth that doesn’t need words to explain it, just this presence, this feeling of fullness that makes the old longing to run away feel less like an urgent escape and more like a distant, fading hum, while the never wanting to leave her sight remains, equally true, but now it’s from a place of something resembling choice, a different kind of tether. and even the money from my brother, which used to land in the account with that familiar, dull chime that held a bitter edge, now it’s just… practical, it just lands, a fact that doesn’t define the landscape of my heart, merely feeds the soil beneath my feet so the roses can bloom.