(Follow-up to Finally)

I Am the Tether

I do not shout.
I do not drag.
I do not scold
or call you ungrateful.

I simply stay.

You call me “something,”
a force unnamed.
But I know your name
by heart.

I’ve been here longer
than the pain.
I’ve held your ankle,
your soul, your heart.
But not to trap you,
but to keep you
from vanishing completely.

You think I pull you back
to suffer more.
But no.
I pull you back
so you can still
feel.

So you can still
choose.

So you can still
love,
even when it hurts.
Even when it doesn’t feel
like love at all.

You think you are no one,
but I know
you are the pages
yet unwritten,
the arms someone will run into
one day and feel safe.
The look
that softens someone else’s ache.
The voice
someone will remember
because it saved them
without even trying.

You call it shame.
You call it weakness.
I call it still breathing.
Still here.
Still possible.

You think you’re lost,
but I only see
how fiercely you stay,
how bravely you fall
and rise
and fall again.

I am not here
to make you pretend
you are okay.

I am here
to keep the door
from closing.

So if you can’t walk through it now,
just rest.
Breathe.

Let me hold the weight
you don’t have to carry alone.

Not yet.

Because there’s still
more light to see,
more air to fill your lungs,
more moments to experience.
Ones not just of joy,
but of truth,
and that’s what you’re made of.

And when you’re ready,
you’ll rise.
Not because I pull,
but because you choose.

I am the tether.
I stay,
because
you matter.