The Thing That Always Returns

It returns

like air you didn’t ask for,

like salt left on your tongue

after the storm has passed,

sliding into the hollow

you carved for quiet

and thought you owned.

I feel it

in the tremble of my hands,

in the echo behind my ribs

that swells when I laugh,

in the cup I didn’t finish,

in the corner of the room I never sit in.

It knows

where I am weakest,

how to fold itself

into the space between my thoughts,

the pause in my voice,

the place where I told myself

I had survived.

I try to name it,

to lock it in a box,

but it moves through walls,

through time,

through everything I thought was mine,

and it remembers

even the moments I tried to forget.

It returns

like blood you cannot wash away,

like a song you cannot stop humming,

like the sharp pieces of yourself

you thought the world had eaten,

all of it

coming back to remind you

that nothing leaves completely,

and everything that leaves

always finds its way home.

_____

Author’s Note:

This poem explores the moments when something from our past; pain, love, memory, returns without warning. I wanted to capture not just the fact of its return, but the physical and emotional imprint it leaves. The trembling hands, the echo in the chest, the everyday objects that carry pieces of it. For me, these returns are unavoidable reminders that the past is never truly gone, and that survival is not linear. This is about witnessing the return, feeling it, and recognizing the shift it causes inside us.