Where Laughter Lives Now

There is a place I have come to
That does not require explanation.

Love meets me here—
not dressed in urgency,
not asking for proof,
but laughing—softly, knowingly—
as if it has always understood
What I took years to learn.

It is a quiet laughter.
The kind that does not interrupt the room,
but changes it.

Once, I believed love needed effort—
carefully measured words,
perfectly timed grace,
Forgiveness that looked respectable.

Now I know—
Love is simpler than that,
and far more sacred.

It is warmth.
It is present.
It is the ease of not having to brace.

And forgiveness—
how it has softened me.

Not into weakness,
but into something more refined—
a woman who no longer carries
what does not belong to her spirit.

There is a heat to it,
this alchemy of letting go.

A gentle fire that does not destroy,
but transforms—
until what once felt heavy
becomes… light.

And then, almost unexpectedly,
I find myself laughing.

Not at what was—
But how far I have come
from needing it to be different.

There is intimacy here now—
with myself,
with the present moment,
with a love that does not ask me
to be anything other than whole.

I move differently.

More poised.
More certain.
Less concerned with being understood,
and more devoted to being true.

Because the deepest kind of love—
the kind that stays,
the kind that heals—
does not arrive in chaos.

It arrives in ease.

And I, at last,
have learned to recognize it.

To receive it.
To trust it.

To laugh with it.

And to remain—
unmoved,
unrushed,
and deeply, beautifully at home.

Sherley Delia