The sun is bleeding gold and lavender across the afternoon sky, sinking behind the trees like it’s too tired to keep watching. I know the feeling.

I sit on the porch, cigarette between my lips, another already dead in the ashtray that damn purple plate Andrew made in the second grade. I almost threw it away once… but something stopped me. Maybe guilt? Maybe love? Maybe both?

The smoke curls around my face like the past always hanging there, never letting me forget.

I wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t always... this. There was a time I laughed more than I cursed, held my children close instead of pushing them away. But grief has claws, and shame digs deeper than you’d think. And somewhere between funerals and long shifts and silence at the dinner table, I lost the sound of their voices. Lost the sound of my own.

But tonight with this soft sky and the ache in my chest I feel it. Not peace. Not yet. But something close. A pull. A whisper. Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s just me finally listening.

I ain’t perfect. Hell, I’m far from it. I still smoke too much. I still get short when I’m tired. I still flinch when Ashley looks at me with those big, sad eyes like she’s not sure I’m really back.

But I want to be. I do. And wanting has to count for something, right?

I flick the cigarette away and watch the ember die out. Then I sit there, in the hush of twilight, and I promise the sky or maybe myself that I’ll try again tomorrow.