The Hardest Grace

I wake with my hands open.

This is what I notice first—the quiet miracle of it. For months they have slept curled like small fists against my sternum, guarding a wound that had long since gone septic. But this morning they lie flat on the white sheet, palms upward, asking for nothing. The light comes through the window the way it always did, and I see that it is the same light, falling across the empty side of the bed in the same patient gold. It was never the one who turned away.

I rise and press my palms to the glass. The window is cold; the world outside is the same world. Birds at the feeder, the neighbor's dog circling its stake, a truck passing with its load of pipes. None of it knows what I have survived. I find this strangely gentle.