In response to :https://dversepoets.com/

2025 did not arrive gently.
It came like a knock in the dark,
like breath held too long,
like truth asking to be named.

It came with a name — Liam —
not as a headline,
not as a memory to be softened,
but as a wound that refused silence.
A life that asked for justice
and found its echo in me.

This was the year I learned
that grief can sharpen into purpose,
that love does not end
when a body does.
It transforms.
It speaks.
It demands.

While the world kept moving,
my house stood still.
A husband confined to a bed,
time folding in on itself,
nights heavy with worry
and mornings taught by endurance.
Care became a language.
Patience became prayer.

And somewhere between hospital hours
and sleepless nights,
between truth-seeking and survival,
The Afterlove Voice was born.

Not from comfort.
Not from ease.
But from necessity.

I wrote because silence was a lie.
I sang because justice needed breath.
I spoke because something in me said:
If you don’t carry this story,
who will?

2025 broke illusions.
It stripped me of who I was
before loss,
before truth,
before courage had a cost.

And in that breaking,
I found my spine.
My fire.
My voice.

This was the year I did not look away.
The year love turned into witness.
The year pain learned how to speak
without apology.

2025 is not a year I will romanticize.
But it is the year I became
true.

And that
is something I will carry
for the rest of my life.

💫Maggie

The Afterlove Voice 💫