When It Becomes Yours Poem by Oluwagbemisola O. Lawal

The siren is just noise in the distance,
a distant wail that makes you glance once, then look away.
Until it slows, until the red lights paint your own front step,
and suddenly the sound is a fist closing around your chest.

"Sorry" is cheap currency we pass around too freely.
Until a doctor says it, eyes steady, voice careful,
and the word lands like a stone in still water
ripples that never quite settle.

Funeral food is just food: rice, stew, the same plates.
Until the pots are boiling in your kitchen,
until the scent fills rooms that used to hold laughter,
and every bite tastes of absence.

Hospital corridors are ordinary hallways,
white walls, scuffed floors, the soft beep of machines.
Until your feet know every crack in the tile,
until you are the one leaning against the wall,
whispering prayers into the fluorescent quiet.

Life feels light when the weight belongs to someone else.
You nod, you offer soft words, you mean them,
then you return to your ordinary evening.
But one day the lesson arrives without warning:
grief, loss, heartbreak, none of it makes sense
until the name on the chart is the one you love,
until the empty chair is at your table.

That is when you understand.
Nothing is more fragile
than the breath we forget to notice,
the ordinary morning we assume will come again,
the life we walk through half-awake,
taking for granted
what can vanish
between one heartbeat
and the next.