Exploring the Caves of Sorrow
There comes a point when the light feels dishonest—
when even morning feels like a lie
told by those who’ve forgotten the taste of grief.
So you go underground.
You crawl through the narrow mouth of yourself,
into the places no one visits willingly.
The walls drip memory.
You touch them anyway.
Each drop is an old ache,
a name you buried in the soft mud of forgetting.
They call to you, not cruelly, but certain:
Come see what still lives here.
At first, you flinch.
You think sorrow is decay—
but it’s not.
It’s the body remembering how to feel
when the world taught it to go numb.
It’s the soul kneeling in its own ruins,
learning the architecture of endurance.
You keep moving, barefoot and shaking,
until the dark starts to hum.
You realize it’s your own heartbeat—
slowed, honest, alive.
And for the first time in years,
you stop running from yourself.
Because sadness is not the opposite of joy—
it’s the root beneath it.
It is proof that you have loved something enough
to be hollowed by its absence.
It is the soft animal inside you,
still howling to be held.
When you emerge, the light doesn’t blind you anymore.
It kneels, too—
gentler now, as if it understands
that you’ve come back changed.
That you’ve seen what breaks you
and chosen to stay.
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POETRY ANTHOLOGIES BY BRITT WOLFE:
