21 Letters – #20 Baron
You came in quietly,
like morning light slipping through trees
after a storm so long
I forgot the sky could be soft.
I wasn’t looking.
My hands were full
of grief and ash,
of torn pages and burned-out maps.
I had buried my sister
and the version of my life
that once bloomed beside hers,
and I was surviving,
just barely,
on muscle memory
and the rhythm of heartbreak.
But then,
there were your eyes,
green like moss growing
where the forest floor remembers
how to hold life again.
And your voice,
not loud, not demanding,
just there.
Steady.
Kind.
Patient,
like the earth waiting for spring
without needing to rush it.
You saw me -
not the polished surface
or the mask I wear
when the ache gets too loud.
But the bruised spirit,
the flinching heart,
the woman knee-deep in sorrow
and still walking.
And instead of turning away,
you reached out your hand
and said
“I love you.”
Not in spite of the wreckage
but because of it,
as if you saw beauty
in the ruins I lived in,
as if you knew that love
can be the wildflower
that grows through concrete.
You reminded me,
gently,
consistently,
that love does not have to be a battlefield,
that it doesn’t need to be begged for
or bled for.
That it can be a warm fire
and not a wildfire,
that it can be soft
without being fragile.
Through you,
I found my breath again.
Through you,
I laughed
when I thought the sound
had left me for good.
Through you,
hope returned,
not all at once,
but in glimmers:
a morning with no dread,
a night with no tears,
a thought about tomorrow
that didn’t hurt.
You are a steady stream
through my droughted land,
the quiet moonlight
on nights I didn’t believe
I could make it through.
You are the first green shoot
in a burned field,
the proof
that life returns.
And now,
when I think of a future,
it is no longer a blank sky.
It has your hands in it,
your voice,
your quiet strength.
It has morning coffees
and long drives,
and soft laughter between us
in the rooms we will build together.
I don’t know what the world will bring.
But I know this:
whatever it is,
I see you there –
in the distance,
in the light,
in the peace
I never thought I'd find again.
And I love you,
not just because you healed me,
but, in part, because you reminded me
that I was always worth healing.
That love, real love,
feels like coming home
to a place
I never believed
could exist.