by Sedona Torres
Do not ask me where the scars came from.
Ask instead what they opened.
For pain, when held long enough, can carve a doorway
where judgment once lived.
The broken Know the language of trembling hands.
The lonely recognize the silence inside another’s smile.
Those who have wandered
do not laugh at those still lost.
They remember.
Perhaps we were never sent here
to become perfect.
Perhaps we came
to become gentle.
To discover that every soul is carrying a story
it has not yet found
the courage to tell.
So let mercy arrive
before opinion.
Let kindness speak
before certainty.
For the one you struggle to understand may be walking
through the very fire that once
became your light.
And when our days grow quiet, when all the names we gathered
fall back into dust,
perhaps we will remember—
the stars
were never only
above us.
They have always burned within us.
Each of us a small piece
of an ancient sky,
fallen only
to learn
how to help one another
find our way home.