The Weight You No Longer Need to Name

A story for fall.
On what you release once you understand it stayed.

You carried it for years.
Not because you meant to—
because you didn’t know you could set it down.

It shaped you.
It steadied you.
It hurt, and somehow,
it helped.

Then one day,
you stop reaching for it.
Not from grief
but from the mercy of time.

You realize it’s already part of you.
The lesson.
The love.
The leaving.

You don’t have to name it anymore.
It knows who it is.