Regardless of the weight I’ve carried,
the quiet aches no one could name,
the rooms I learned to survive in
before I ever learned to live—
I am still standing
inside a life
someone once prayed for.
A younger version of me,
or someone somewhere
with empty hands and heavy hope,
would call this abundance—
would call this grace.
So all I can do
is not waste it.
All I can do
is gather the fragments—
every lesson that cut,
every truth that cracked me open,
every moment I almost gave up—
and turn them into something softer
for someone else.
All I can do
is show love
even when it feels undeserved,
even when it’s unfamiliar in my own hands.
Show grace
when it would be easier to harden,
when I remember what it felt like
to need it and not receive it.
Show compassion
that reaches beyond my own story,
beyond what was given to me
or withheld.
Because maybe
this is how I make sense of it—
not by rewriting what happened,
but by choosing
what happens through me.
And if nothing else,
if I never get all the answers
or closure or clarity—
then let it be said
that I did this much:
I took what I was given,
and I gave something gentler back.
All I can do
is that.
