what death does not undo a poem by Elaine Lunt Hamm

WHAT DEATH DOES NOT UNDO 

Death does not undo harm.

Grief does not require sacrifice.

I did then what I needed to survive.

Now that I know better—

what safety feels like,

what peace costs—

I choose myself.

That is not cruelty.

That is courage.

That is the love I was never taught to give myself.

I am learning it now.

James Baldwin said the place I'll fit

will not exist until I make it.

So I am making it—

brick by boundary,

breath by breath.

Ocean Vuong warned that tenderness

can feel like proof of ruin.

So when I ache to reach for her,

I hold my own hand instead.

Alison Bechdel knew:

what makes me different

is what makes me whole.

This boundary is not a flaw.

It is the shape of my wholeness.

I can grieve what I never had

and still protect what I have now.

I can miss the mother I wanted

and still say no to the mother I got.

Both can be true.

Both are tender.

Both are mine to hold.

I am learning now

that choosing myself—

again and again,

even when it aches—

is the most honest kind of love

there is.