IN MY SORROWS, I RISE.

 

I came back

to the place of my sorrows,

to roads that remember

the footsteps of a grieving child,

to hills that watched

my first heartbreak,

to skies that carried

the day my father left.

Years have passed,

yet grief still knows my name.

It waits in the sunrise.

It hides in the evening wind.

It sits quietly beneath the moonlight

and whispers memories

I tried so hard to bury.

Here,

I lost my first love—

my father.

The man whose voice

made the world feel safe.

The man whose absence

turned laughter into longing.

When sorrow found me.

I was too young to understand death.

Too young to understand pain.

Too young to know

that some wounds survive the years.

Now,

I am a woman.

A survivor.

Yet in this place,

I sometimes become that child again.

The child who cried in silence.

The child who carried grief

like a stone in her chest.

The child who learned

that life can change forever

in a single moment.

And still,

I rise.

With tears in my eyes,

I rise.

With heartache in my soul,

I rise.

With memories that refuse to fade,

I rise.

Because grief may walk beside me,

but it does not own me.

Sorrow may visit my heart,

but it cannot be my home.

And though Phalombe remembers

the day I broke,

it will also remember

the day I returned,

stood among the ruins,

and chose to live again.