Not Sorry for Surviving

There is an apology I am supposed to owe. I have looked for it. It is not in me.

What I did was continue. That is the whole charge.

I set down what was crushing me, and the sound it made when it landed woke the whole house.

Your hurt is real. I do not argue with it.

But hurt is not evidence. A wound can be real and still not be a verdict.

The pain was shown to me as if it were my signature on something. I looked closely. That is not my hand.

There was a version of me that would have apologized to make the room quiet again. I know the exact cost of that quiet. The apology was never the end of anything. It was the rent.

I did not survive at you. I survived.

I am not sorry it hurt you.
I am not sorry I survived.
For a long time those were one sentence. They are two.

The stillness I live in now was not taken from anyone.