Today, I will not speak of love, even if it is the poet's greatest treasure, I will not recall those nights of longing or dread; I will not describe your hands, nor those complicit hazel eyes, that searched in me...for certainty. Today I will not speak of those days of hope when I waited for your footsteps beyond the door, nor of futures imagined, nor of tender words that blossomed into poetry or any touch bestowed. Today I will not remember your arms that held my body safe against my endless terrors. Today I'm not going to speak of love, its rhyme. It took long enough!
# Not Today I won't die today. The light filtering through the window tells me so. The sparrow still chirps its small song on the sill. My heart, that stubborn muscle, keeps its rhythm like a watchman who refuses to abandon his post. Not today. The tea steams in the cup, the morning newspaper sprawls across the table with its usual disasters and small mercies. My hands know their business— folding, touching, reaching. The world hasn't finished with me yet, or I with it. I won't die today because the letter I'm waiting for hasn't arrived. Because there's a book I started that deserves an ending. Because somewhere a child laughs at something I haven't heard yet, and the sound pulls me back like a rope through darkness. Not today. My bones ache but they hold. My breath comes—shallow perhaps, uncertain perhaps— but it comes. The clock on the wall ticks its small defiance. I rise, I move, I persist in this small rebellion called being alive. The sparrow takes flight. I watch it go, and in that watching, I claim another hour, another breath, another ordinary miracle. Not today.
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