thank you for letting me in.
not into your bed.
not into the heat two bodies trade in the dark.
not into the nearness people keep mistaking for closeness.
thank you for letting me past the face you keep for everyone else —
past the version of you that answers evenly, laughs on time, and carries a whole day’s weight without letting it show.
past that.
into the room you do not show even yourself, where the younger versions are still sitting on the floor, still holding what no one ever came back to lift from them.
i know other hands have held you.
and not all of them knew what they were holding.
i know what hands like that leave in you.
the way the body learns to brace where it once would open.
the way a kind hand can land like a warning.
so i know what it cost you, every time you let the silence open.
when you stopped making the strength look like it was free.
when your voice caught, and something honest stood there instead.
i saw it.
the wound that taught you to go still.
the part of you that still wants to be held without having to explain why it is trembling.
and to be let that close —
slowly.
inch by inch.
in the dark language between breath and skin —
is to be handed something with a pulse.
it is not casual.
it is not something to take in careless hands.
some people only want the easy parts.
the laugh. the body. the hours that ask nothing back.
they want the warmth and never ask what it took to make it.
but real love does not leave when it meets the wound.
it sits beside it.
quietly.
without trying to fix it.
without making it mean something.
without asking it to become easier to hold.
so whatever you put into my hands,
i will hold it gently —
the way you hold something that has already been dropped once.
not because you are fragile.
because what is tender should not have to harden to survive being held.
i will not make weapons out of your confessions.
i will not use what you carry to fill something hollow in me.
i will not ask you to carry it lighter so that being near you costs me less.
i will take it the way you carry something asleep.
softly.
without waking it.
without setting it down to see how heavy it is.
because the part a person hides from everyone, even themselves, does not survive being held wrong twice.
it asks the hands to go quiet.
to slow.
to become the hands it can finally rest in.
and if you ever wonder whether the darker parts of you are too much to hand anyone —
they are not.
they are just the parts no one ever held right.
not before you let me in.
and i will not be one more pair of hands
that teaches them to hide.
