Page 12 of Sage Haven
Every morning.
After the nightmares.
Before the day could catch up to me.
I came back.
I let the breeze skim over my skin, cool and soft.
I let the flowers fill my lungs with their sharp, sweet breath and lost myself in the stillness.
But still a heavy burden was there within me. Something that kept me from feeling completely safe.
Sitting there one morning, knees pulled to my chest, surrounded by beauty that shouldn’t have felt like a lie, I found myself asking—had I really left Sanele behind?
Or was it still stitched into my veins, stitched into my name, in ways I didn’t understand?
Was I free or was I just pretending?
The questions gnawed at me.
They circled like vultures waiting for me to fall still long enough for them to feast.
I wanted to believe something good had come from all of it.
That through the wreckage and the ruin, I had found this—a sanctuary.
In the wildflowers, the river, and trees.
Maybe I wasn’t fixed.
Maybe I never would be.
But maybe I wasn’t just surviving anymore.
Maybe I was starting to understand what it meant to live.
And perhaps, for now, that was enough.
The thought lingered, delicate and fragile, like a spider’s web swaying in a breeze.
Too easy to destroy.
Because deep down… I knew it was a lie.
A convenient story I told myself because the truth was too heavy to carry in daylight.
And because if I didn’t keep telling it, I might not keep going.
I leaned back, lying in the grass, the cool blades pressing against my skin. I stared up at the sky that was so vast it felt like I could fall into it and never hit bottom.
It was comforting and terrifying.
Just like everything else in my life.
I slipped on my headphones, scrolling through my playlist. The haunting chords spilled into my ears, weaving through me like a pulse I wasn’t sure was my own. The song echoed something I didn’t have words for.
Something I refused to face.
