The First Before

Some of us wake not knowing
the taste of a morning without tremors,
the hush before the thunder,
the inhale before the rupture.

We carry in our spine
the echo of fists we never saw coming,
our heartbeat rehearsing disaster
like a dirge on repeat.

I remember once,
I thought trembling was home—
my body’s default setting,
wired for warnings that never let me rest.
I learned fear before I learned joy,
scar before smile,
trauma before the windshield of a clear blue sky.

Teach me how to unlearn the quake,
how to whisper to my cells that silence can be safe,
that hands unclench,
that lungs expand without the sting
of remembered pain.

I stand now on this stage
in a body that’s trying to rewrite its code,
trying to scribble new maps in the marrow:
here is peace,
here is stillness,
here is a “before”
I choose to build.

So I claim today as my first sunrise—
my hands unclenched,
my breath slow and certain,
my shadow dissolving
under the light of a moment
I let be unbroken.

I am student and teacher,
the architect of my own uncharted ground.
My nerves learn lullabies,
my bones learn fortitude,
my soul learns that even tremors
cease when we insist on calm.

This is how we birth a “before.”
Line by line,
beat by beat,
we ink new stories on blank pages,
we learn that trauma
is not the only thing
we were ever meant to know.