Walking out of the hospital,
my freedom grasped in trembling hands,
like a bird who forgot the feeling of sky.
I hadn’t touched sunlight in weeks—
the air unfamiliar, too wide, too bright,
my steps unsure on ground
that no longer held the same promises.

I had lost my soul there.
Not just time, not just weight—
but a quiet kind of certainty
that life would always go on the way it did.
Pain has a way of rearranging
even your hopes.

But as I stepped onto the pavement,
a calmness fell over everything—
like the world paused for a beat,
just to breathe with me.
And then it came.

Not a thunderclap,
not a holy revelation written in flame,
but something gentler.
The universe doesn’t always chant—
sometimes it whispers.

The breeze leaned into me,
its fingers curling through my scarf,
and it said: You are still alive.
You are still in need.

I closed my eyes,
and the heat of the sun
pressed into my face
like an old friend,
squeezing me in a hug,
reminding me what it meant
to simply be alive.

A crow called from a rooftop,
its voice loud and unashamed.
It didn’t ask for silence or apology.
It just was.
And I envied that honesty.

The sky above stretched out
like a page not yet written on,
a writer caught in block—
and I, with my scarred hands,
was holding the pen again.

Flowers I didn’t remember planting
came alive under my fingertips,
nodding from a nearby bed—
as if they were flowers for the dead.
They hummed at me,
a low sound of contentment,
as if they’d been waiting
for my flourishing hands.

The universe, in all its casual magic,
was speaking in every direction:
in the steady hum of cars passing by,
in the mother pushing her baby,
in the child laughing at nothing in particular
outside the hospital grounds.
It said: Look what continues without you.
And yet look what welcomes you back.

My feet, once so heavy with dread,
began to remember their way.
Each step a vow:
I am still moving.
I am still choosing to live.
I felt the earth beneath me—
not just a place to stand,
but a living pulse beneath my soles—
as if it, too, had missed me.
As if it had sent me that breeze,
that bird,
that slant of sunlight
through broken clouds.
As a sign for me to keep going.

And maybe it had.

Maybe the universe does not wait
for grand occasions
to remind us we belong.

Maybe it leaves clues
in sidewalk cracks,
in rustling trees,
in the silence between heartbeats.

As I walked, I let my breath match the wind—
deep, slow, returning.
Each inhale a reclaiming,
each exhale a release.
Same way they taught me in there.
Caged by their arms and wings left imprisoned.

I thought of the hours spent
beneath fluorescent lights,
the machines beeping time
like a cruel metronome,
the strangers in white coats
holding pieces of my fate
in their gloved hands.

And yet here I was.
Not whole, perhaps,
but alive.
And the universe
was writing messages everywhere for me to read.

The birds didn’t ask
what I had endured.
The sky didn’t demand
that I am grateful every second.
They just were.
And that was permission enough
for me to be, too.

I sat on a bench—
one I had walked past a million times
before I knew its value.
The metal cold,
the moment hot.

And I sobbed.
Not from sadness,
not even from joy,
but from the overwhelming grace
of ordinary things that were taken away from me.

A leaf landed on my knee,
spun down from some secret place above—
not to bring meaning,
but to remind me:
I was in the story,
in a different sense.
But I belong.

No, it wasn’t any single thing
that carried the message—
not just the breeze,
or the light,
or the quiet.
It was in all of it.

The universe did not send me a sign
because I asked.
It sent one because I listened.
And I will not forget it.
I will survive and live.