you hold the map until the paper softens with your own sweat
you say the road ends here because you have decided it must
you name the hill before your feet have touched it
you build a house from everything you refuse to question
you say this person will not change
you say this grief has a fixed size
you say i know myself, and the knowing becomes a cage you mistake for a home
but the river moves while you sleep
the ground gives out in the first real frost
the map keeps drawing a country that stopped existing the moment you stopped walking
every wall built to keep out the dark
is the same wall keeping out the light
to already know the answer is to stop hearing the question
to be sure of the path is to walk past the only water that was ever moving
we defend what we knew yesterday like it was ground instead of weather
we would rather be right than be alive
this is the whole of it
the tragedy was never that things change
the tragedy is that we broke ourselves trying to hold them still
we refused the morning because it wasn’t the night
we refused the person in front of us
because we were still arguing with who they used to be
look at your hands
still closed around something that stopped being true while you were sleeping
look at how tired you’ve become from holding air
nothing out there was ever waiting for your approval to keep moving
it moves the way breath moves, on its own schedule, indifferent to your grip
you do not need to know the road to walk it
you do not need tomorrow decided to love what is already here
let go of the hand
and you let go of the war
open your palm
let the small hard thing fall into the grass and stay there
let the sky remain exactly as wide and unfinished as it always was
and grieve, finally, for every door you sealed shut
certain of what waited on the other side, when nothing was ever waiting there at all
but grief was never the destination, only the toll paid at the last gate
and once it’s paid, something in the chest that has been clenched since childhood simply, finally, unclenches
this is what no one warns you about surrender
it does not feel like falling
it feels like the exact moment a held breath remembers it was always allowed to leave the body
you were not building a shelter all those years
you were building a coffin the exact size of what you were afraid to lose
and today, for no reason you can name, you set the lid down and stepped out into air you had already been breathing the entire time
you were never in danger
you were only ever in your own way
so let the war end
not with a treaty, not with a winner
let it end the way morning ends a nightmare, simply by being real enough that the other thing can no longer hold
you are not falling
you are finally being caught by the very ground you spent your whole life afraid would disappear
—lyra moon (i was never lost, i had simply been standing so still i mistook stillness for arrival)
september 5, 2026