"this thaw"

I am afraid — a feeling I thought had left me long ago. After all that nothing, something comes back: a small, sharp life in the chest. My hands tremble like tired branches, they fear they cannot hold — and still refuse to open. There is a stubbornness in my grip, as if letting go means losing the last proof I exist. I learned how to be numb: eyes dry, a quiet practiced in the ribs, watching things break without a pulse answering. Numbness was a shelter that smelled like ash. Now the shelter cracks. Tears find the corners of my eyes — they do not stay; they run like honest rain. My heart wakes with an ache I do not recognize, and every broken thing becomes a wound. It is unfamiliar and it is dangerous: I want to flee to the silence that felt like safety, to the dullness that kept the storms at bay. But something else stirs — quieter than fear — a pain that has the shape of repair. Am I weaker for feeling? Or is this the body remembering how to live? I do not know. I only know the pull: back toward the dark, or forward into the bruise. If this is healing, it is not neat. If this is falling, it is not final. For now I stand between both — hands tight, eyes wet, heart learning to hurt and hold.