Before the world had spoken your name,
before the first breath of your days was drawn,
love had already gathered you
into its quiet keeping.
It stood beside the dawn of your life,
in the unseen mercies that bore your beginning,
in the slow unfolding of your story
through seasons of brightness and trial.
There comes a hush after the burning—
when the air is thick with endings,
and the earth is draped in a garment of gray.
What once was radiant has been unmade,
what once bore form has yielded to dust,
and all seems given over to silence.
Yet even here, in the stillness of surrender,
the hidden labor of renewal begins its quiet work.
In the beginning, it was only burden—
stone laid upon stone,
its shadow descending into the hollow of your shoulders,
pressing the hours into a slow and heavy hush.
You did not summon it,
yet it came, unbidden,
and you, without complaint or flourish,
took it upon your frame—
step by unnumbered step,
through the measureless corridors of days.
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