When Forty Blooms

It was just a birthday. Then everything in her asked, what if. Simone Harris has always known how to hold it down. For her son. For her clients. For the sports agency she built from scratch. She keeps things running, keeps herself moving, and keeps her heart tucked safely out of reach. But this birthday feels different. It falls on a leap year, a date that only circles back every so often. A rare kind of day that feels like it arrives exactly when it's meant to. The kind that makes you pause and ask what you have been pushing through just to keep going. In that stillness, something begins to surface alongside it. Fatigue. Questions. The quiet ache she has learned to ignore. She is not falling apart. Still, something is shifting. The pressure she has lived under feels heavier than it once did. And as she begins to listen to what her spirit has been trying to say, the past reappears, bringing with it a familiar comfort, unfinished conversations, and a quiet invitation to feel again.