Remembering Your Name

I learned to breathe underwater

in rooms where grief had swollen the walls.

Along the way I mistook the weight for purpose,

the darkness for depth

I entered other people’s nights, fearlessly 

like a diver with bare hands,

tugging at their strings of light

a pearl lodged in the throat of sorrow,

Hope hiding behind the ribs.

The shadows recognized me.

They wrapped around my ankles

like familiar tides,

whispering stay, you’re good at this,

and I believed them

because communing in the dark felt holy.

I carried lanterns that were never lit,

And called the ache service,

driven by grace 

But compassion, unmoored, becomes erosion.

Even the ocean takes the shore

One day I surfaced

and the sky felt unfamiliar

too bright, too empty,

as if I had abandoned something sacred.

My hands were still outstretched

A question arrived,

soft as breathe 

Who searches for the searcher?

Who lowers a rope to the one who stays? 

Light is something you must stand inside

to know its shape.

Here, in my own darkness,

others come.

They tend a small fire with me,

curl their bodies around mine

until warmth finds me.

Hands appear where mine had emptied.

Voices hum the way out

I learn to be held

I remember my name 

If more come, cold and trembling 

We will keep them till they remember theirs the same