The barista remembers your coffee order
the same week your mother forgets your name.
Life is a joke where the punchline is and yet—
you laugh anyway, teeth stained with red wine.

At the bus stop, a stranger’s umbrella
tilts to share its crooked shelter with you.
Rain soaks your left shoe. Gratitude pools
in your right lung. You carry both home.

Your therapist says *trauma is a taxidermied bird*—
still beautiful, still dead behind the glass.
You cry over burnt toast. The toaster hums
a hymn you swear you’ve heard before.

In the ER waiting room, a man peels an orange.
The smell blooms like a pardon. For ten seconds,
everyone stops bleeding. For ten seconds,
the fluorescent lights feel like a sun that stayed.

You fall in love with the cashier who wears
mismatched socks and hums Radiohead.
Fall out of love when he says *Have a nice day*
to the customer after you. Grief is a shapeshifter.

On the subway, a toddler offers you half
of her Goldfish cracker. You take it.
The train sways. For once, no one is a stranger—
just bodies breathing the same recycled air.

You survive on these crumbs of mercy.
You survive because the moon, too, has phases
where she refuses to show her full face,
and the world still spins, forgiving her anyway.