What Leaves You

I fed the dark my warmth.
It gave me nothing back.

Still - the light that was born,
is proof that it once lived in me.

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There are souls who leave pieces of themselves in everyone they touch.

Small, invisible relics.

Softness offered to mouths that only knew how to bite.

And when nothing returns…
they begin to rot with questions.

Listen carefully, little spark.

Echoes are not proof of value.

The cosmos is ancient, but it is not fair.
Not every star is reflected by the sea.
Not every prayer is carried back by the wind.

There are gardens that bloom unseen beneath frozen worlds.

What leaves you is a confession of your nature.

Cruel things give cruelty effortlessly.
Empty things distribute emptiness.

But to offer gentleness, while carrying your own private apocalypse?

That reveals what kind of creature you truly are.

Love doesn’t become wasted when it is unloved in return.

A soul is shaped by what it repeatedly releases into the world.

So if your hands continue creating warmth after life has filled them with ash…
Then warmth is what you are.

If you continue speaking softly after being spoken to like a wound…
Then somewhere inside your rib cage,
lives something holy enough to survive corruption.

Do not become ashamed of your tenderness,
simply because others lacked the anatomy to hold it correctly.

The moon does not mourn every ocean that refuses to shimmer for her.
And the sun does not hesitate to rise every morning despite the world calling this action a mundane certainty.

They still arrive, glowing.

And perhaps that is what frightens darkness most.

Not goodness untouched by suffering, but goodness that crawled out of suffering.

Alive.

Still carrying light between it’s teeth.