The First Morning I Didn’t Cry
Jonathan ValaniaThe sun rose like it always had,
but this time I didn’t hate it for doing so.
No one was in the hallway.
No footsteps.
No slammed doors.
Just silence—
and not the kind that comes before impact.
I touched the morning—
not as a threat,
but as something I could stay inside.
There was no apology waiting to be demanded.
No empty promises folded into tired hands.
No tension hiding in the kitchen light.
Just me,
and the strange echo of stillness
where your voice used to live.
And I didn’t cry.
Not because I was healed.
Not because I had forgiven you.
But because I had nothing left
to beg for.
No more timelines to rewrite.
No more pieces of myself
to hand over in exchange for a quieter night.
I had already burned the apology I would never receive.
Buried the future that would never come.
I thought I was broken.
Felt numb, like something sacred had gone missing.
But I wasn't broken.
I was just… done.
That morning,
I put the cup down,
breathed in,
and realized I didn’t owe pain anything anymore.
And that silence—
that unremarkable silence—
was the softest thing
I’d ever survived.
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