Balachandran V's "Afterwards" describes what happens inside a person once a painful time is over. The hurt doesn't arrive right away. It comes later, first in trickles and then in torrents, and the speaker treats this flood as a kind of washing, something that cleanses rather than only damages.
The poem moves in stages. Anger is the first thing to heal, anger over what others did and failed to do. Regret follows, the sting of what the speaker did and didn't do. The matching phrasing in these two stanzas makes both feel like the same sort of ache, pointed outward and then inward. Then comes the turning point: a sunbeam through clouds, bringing the realization that love was there all along, even "lingering in the shadows." The poem ends with just two short lines about peace within.
The mood is quiet and hopeful, and the short final lines feel like an exhale.