21. Keeper Of My Heart
- Aug 16
- 2 min read
What is to be
when you hold the softest part of me?
You, still learning,
cradle something that once beat
only to the rhythm of my becoming.
Now it waits,
not afraid,
just watching.
So I offer you this:
A manual written in moments we haven’t yet lived.
Take care of it.
It enjoys laughter, so laugh,
not because you must,
but because it finds you first.
It thrives in wide skies and unspoken permission.
Let it dance, barefoot,
spinning to music that comes only with risk.
It blooms in freedom,
shrinks beneath shame.
Do not cage it with silence
or feed it promises
you do not mean to keep.
It loves without reservation,
but knows how to leave.
Knows when the soil turns cold,
when the air stops singing.
It remembers,
but it does not beg.
You are my heart now.
Not as possession,
but as passage.
While you walk your own way,
let it walk with you.
Let it teach you
how to love without armor,
how to ache without drowning,
how to dream without erasing yourself.
And while it is gone from me,
I will not wait idly.
My mind will rise,
not as substitute,
but as steward.
I will become architect of quiet strength,
learn the mathematics of longing
and the science of self.
I will speak gently
to the echoes left behind.
If one day,
you find your own heart too full to hold,
when laughter spills from you without warning,
when dreams curl at the edges from too much light,
when your hands grow light with peace,
and you no longer need what I gave,
Set it down,
and it will decide
if it still calls me home.
But if the road you take
proves longer than your feet can bear,
if laughter fades,
and freedom turns to ache,
and the weight of becoming
pulls you too far from yourself,
then come home.
Bring it back to me.
Not out of defeat,
but because you remember
who first handed it to you
with trust,
with fire,
with no conditions but care.
Place it gently
at my door.
I will open both hands,
not to take it back
as it was,
but to hold what’s left
of all it tried to be.
And if your own heart
has tired of wandering,
lay it down beside mine.
Let them rest.
Let them remember
what was simple
before it was brave.
For I, too,
have grown.
And I will not flinch
from what returns
in ruin
or in triumph.
I will be here,
a keeper
who knows how to begin again.