they handed you a game with loaded dice,
a rulebook written in a foreign tongue.
you tried to play, you paid a heavy price,
for everything you said was said all wrong.

i know you feel the weight, the constant test,
the desperate need to be,
the nott to be list,
and to belong.
the hollow echo in your empty chest,
that turns your light into a silent song.

this is not a lesson.
this is not a test.
this is permission to let go.
to lay the old armor down and rest.
the first thing you must know is: no.

no, you do not have to play that part.
no, you do not have to earn your space.
no, you do not have to offer up your heart
just to stay in this relentless place.

the love you crave,
it isn't traded,
it is sold,
or won in battles fought on bloody ground.
it isn't
something you are told to hold.
it is a quietness where you are found.

it is the moment,
shared,
with nothing owed.
a glance that says,
"i see you. you are there."
a hand that helps you carry down the load
without a need to judge it or compare.

so let them have their noisy, crowded room.
their fragile trophies, breaking one by one.
your power isn't growing from that gloom.
your journey has,
in truth,
just now begun.

walk away.
the bravest step is often from.
the deepest strength is knowing when to leave.
this dark you're in?
it isn't your true home.
it's just a tunnel. breathe. and believe.

you are not nothing.
you are the quiet air,
the patient root beneath the frozen stone.
you are the fact that you are still there,
and you do not have to do it all alone.

just for this moment, let the world go dim.
listen not to them, but to your own breath.
this light you feel? it isn't coming from them.
you've been carrying it all along.
it isn't out there.
it's the quiet, beating, unbreakable dawn
inside your chest.

let it be enough for now.
let it be enough.

love is sharing the now.
of course,
magnetism is something else.
love is an every day's dark tunnel one must cross.
i call it "now."