You spend your life

building something that floats—

your hands in every nail,

your breath in every seam.

It creaks in places,

leans slightly to the left,

but it holds.

It carries the weight of everything

you once believed love could save.

And then—

a storm.

Not one you saw coming.

Not one you could outrun.

Just sky,

splitting open

like a secret too long held in.

The ocean unlearns stillness.

The wind forgets mercy.

And the thing you built

starts coming apart

in your hands.

You do not scream.

You do not save it.

You go under.

Salt in your lungs.

Wood in your fists.

You surface holding a piece of what mattered—

a splinter, a memory,

a single name carved into the grain.

And the waves,

they do what grief does:

they rise.

They fall.

They come faster than your breath

and larger than your faith.

At first, they tower—

a hundred feet,

ten seconds apart.

You don’t swim.

You endure.

Your arms ache from holding on.

Your body forgets how to rest.

But grief has tides too.

Eventually,

the waves slow.

Not disappear—never disappear—

but soften.

Eighty feet.

Then forty.

Then far enough apart

that you can speak your own name

without drowning in it.

You never let go of the wreckage.

You wouldn’t if you could.

You love it too much—

the way a father loves

what’s already gone.

What held him up

before it went under.

Some days,

a wave still rises.

Out of nowhere.

But you no longer mistake it

for drowning.

You ride it.

Let it take you

somewhere closer to memory

than pain.

Because grief,

at its gentlest,

is just love

that’s outlived its home.

And you—

still floating,

still aching—

you carry that home

in your hands.

 

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When I Finally Told the Whole Truth