Salvation
Every morning,
I wake with the unpleasant responsibility
of becoming someone
you might have stayed for.
So I make small promises.
I will be kinder today.
Less impatient.
Less afraid.
I will become a better man
in case your absence
is only temporary.
The cruel thing is,
I have been making these promises
for so long,
that I no longer know
whether I am changing for myself
or preparing endlessly
for a return
that may have never intended to happen.
And still,
I wait.
Oh, I’d wait an eternity
without growing tired,
if you so much as thought
about asking me to.
People speak of patience
as though it were a virtue.
They do not understand.
Waiting is easy
when the person you wait for
once convinced you
that life had accidentally
given you something beautiful.
I have spent so long
trying to understand faith.
Perhaps I finally do.
I do not believe in God.
Yet I have believed in your return
with a devotion
most men reserve for heaven.
So perhaps I was never faithless.
Perhaps I simply mistook you
for salvation.
If life has ever been generous to me,
it was only twice.
Once,
when it allowed me to exist.
And once again,
when it allowed me to know you.
You were kind
in the careless way
of someone trying to save everyone else
from their own fate.
You had this strange habit
of making people feel understood.
Not agreed with. Not fixed.
Simply understood.
You listened carefully.
The kind of carefully
that makes a person
accidentally tell the truth.
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You gave yourself away too easily.
You loved people
with a devotion
that should have belonged to yourself.
You made ordinary things
feel important.
You had the frightening ability
to make me forgive the world
simply by existing in it.
You stayed beside others
while quietly abandoning yourself.
It frightened me sometimes.
How willing you were
to lose pieces of yourself
so someone else could remain whole.
You somehow convinced me
that existing
was enough reason
for gratitude.
And perhaps
that is why losing you
felt so impossible.
Because before you,
my mind was a loud place.
A frightening place.
Then you arrived,
and for the first time,
the voices became quiet.
For the first time,
life did not feel
like something
I had to survive.
It felt like something
I was allowed to keep.
You loved people first.
Even when you were hurting.
Even when you needed
that same kindness yourself.
You chose us
on days
when choosing yourself
would have been wiser.
I did not understand then
that devotion
can also become
a form of self-destruction.
I have met kinder people.
Prettier people.
Easier people to love.
But none of them
ever made me feel
that being alive
was a fortunate thing.
You were the only sanctuary I ever found,
and therefore
impossible to replace.
So forgive me
if I continue preparing
for your return.
Some people spend their entire lives
waiting for miracles.
I merely happened
to meet mine once.
