Mamagin,
I used to think you were simply made of patience. Now I know patience is what a person is left with after they swallow a thousand things they wanted to say. You were never born unshakable. You chose it, every single day, because someone small was watching you to learn how to be brave.
I think about the girl you were before me. The one with half-finished plans and a laugh she hadn’t yet learned to soften. I never got to meet her, and I wonder if she ever mourned the life she traded for mine. If she did, she hid it so well that I grew up believing I was never anyone’s sacrifice, only someone’s joy. That is the deepest magic I know: how you made your giving look like having.
Get Sincerely, April’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
There are prayers you whispered that I will never hear, and they are the reason I am standing here. Every door that opened, every storm that passed me by, I used to call it luck. I know better now. It was you, kneeling somewhere in the dark, bargaining with the sky on my behalf.
I am sorry for the years I spoke to you in a hurry. For the moments I looked at my phone while you looked at me. I didn’t know that love like yours runs on a clock none of us can see, and that we are all just borrowing time from the people who never ask for it back.
So let me say it plainly, the way you taught me to love: without conditions, without an audience. You are the first place I was ever safe and the last place I will ever stop needing. And if I am ever kind, if I am ever strong, if I am ever more than I thought I could be, let the world know it was only ever you, unfolding through me.
