I have decided, without rancor,
to be happy in a way that requires no ceremony.
No trumpet. No theatrical exit.
Just me, composed and immaculate,
placing the former ache in a velvet-lined box labeled:
Does Not Apply.
I dismiss the dubious counsel,
the tepid affection,
The people who arrived with empty hands
and a biography crowded with excuses.
I release every paltry offering
that mistook my grace for an endless reserve.
I have settled enough accounts
in silence.
Now comes the sweet joy,
neither timid nor ornamental,
neither borrowed nor rehearsed.
It enters with luminous authority,
as though it has always known
The architecture of my name.
Love, too, has learned my address again.
Not the counterfeit kind,
not the erratic knock at midnight,
not the elaborate apology dressed as devotion.
I mean love with clean hands,
with wit in its mouth,
with support that does not require interpretation.
Love that says,
“Rest. I am here.”
And remains.
There is a particular elegance
in beginning again.
A pristine page.
A lucid morning.
A door that opens
without demanding a lesser version of me.
I am no longer solicitous
toward what sought to diminish my radiance.
I do not audition
for rooms my spirit has already outgrown.
Let the obsolete narratives become debris.
Let the insolent doubts gather their coats.
Let the gratuitous drama
find another stage,
another witness,
another woman
with less discernment
and more available weekends.
As for me,
I am cultivating felicity
with discipline and a little gloss.
I am practicing abundance
with both feet on consecrated ground.
I am allowing tenderness
to be capacious,
not cramped;
reciprocal,
not performed.
And if my joy appears audacious,
good.
It has been modestly long enough.
Today, I choose the benevolent hands,
the candid hearts,
the steady voices,
the people who do not flinch
when I arrive whole, adorned, and entirely awake.
Everything else may remain
where it belongs:
outside the sentence,
outside the sanctuary,
outside the covenant,
outside the new slate
I have written clean
with my own brilliant hand—
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