What Survives of Us

May 11, 2025

This one is for the ones who didn’t make it home,
the ones who left mid-sentence, mid-dream, mid-change.
For the ones who couldn’t believe the light was real
or that it could belong to them.

I don’t write to fix what broke,
I write to keep their names breathing.
Each poem a small defiance of silence,
each syllable a pulse.

They taught me that survival isn’t luck,
it’s work,
and that remembrance is the truest kind of rebellion.

So I keep their laughter in my pocket,
their lessons in my marrow,
and every time I exhale peace,
I whisper their names into it.