bravery is not in the amount of kindness one can show,
it's in moment's left behind that leave an impact.
One does not need to be brave to be strong,
One must be strong to survive,
...
You see me smile on a glowing screen
a snapshot, a story, a captioned dream.
But that's not me. Not really.
It's a moment I chose, a frame I cropped,
...
I don't know if you'll ever read this.
Maybe it's not even for you
maybe it's for me.
Because some truths
...
You are not gone,
but you've made yourself a ghost.
Breathing, walking, laughing somewhere—
yet absent from the only place
...
You preach with a book in your hand,
chapter and verse spilling from your mouth
like a shield
you think makes you holy.
...
Imagine wounding your own child so deeply
they had no choice but to walk away
and still convincing yourself
you are the one who has been wronged.
...
My son asked me once what I feared most,
and I couldn't give him an answer.
How do you put into words
the kind of fear that lives beneath your ribs?
...
Maybe it's just how life works.
distance stretches,
and people drift into silence,
not out of cruelty,
...
If I go suddenly
in a moment that steals the breath from the world,
in a second no one saw coming
I hope you remember this:
...
We grew up near the same water,
close enough to ripple each other's shores,
but never close enough
to learn how the other learned to swim.
...