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Waking with a burn that isn’t quite fire, the speaker traces a quiet, defiant path through silence, grief, and memory. This poem doesn’t seek answers—it questions, it breathes, it survives. With striking imagery and a deeply personal rhythm, it explores what it means to exist without explanation, and the quiet strength in simply still being here. Comparable works include "The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass; "What I Didn’t Know Before" by Ada Limón; "The Uses of Sorrow" by Mary Oliver