F O G - Nicholas W. Hamel

I am living in a fog—

not the soft kind

that blesses the morning,

but the kind that eats the edges

off everything I used to trust.

Even when a breeze passes through,

this haze doesn’t lift.

It thickens.

It learns me.

It grows familiar in ways

I wish it wouldn’t.

I try to pull myself out,

reach back through memory

as if some discarded version

of my formerly ambitious self

might still know the way.

But every path I touch

crumbles to the same gray dust.

It would be easy—

almost comforting—

to blame the world,

the pandemic,

the timing,

the stress.

But no.

This fog is mine.

I built it

one avoided truth at a time.

And yet,

somewhere inside the dim

:a thin line of light,

an outline of a door.

Lord, give me strength

to walk toward what I cannot see,

to trust what has not yet

taken shape,

to believe that even a fog

has a breaking point

when morning comes.

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Nicholas W. Hamel is a husband, father, and poet living in Merrimac, Massachusetts. His writing draws from the emotional realities of caregiving, illness, and personal growth. He explores the vulnerability, hope, and inner strength that shape the human experience. The genre of literature I am submitting is poetry.