You Who Walked Through Fire

May you never go back

to the dark places you fought so hard to leave,

to the nights that swallowed your voice,

to the days when hope was a language you had forgotten.

May you never again sit at the table of your own sorrow, serving yourself the cold meals of regret and silence.

You who crawled through broken hours,

you who stitched the torn fabric of your heart

with nothing but trembling hands and borrowed prayers, you have come too far.

The shadows you once called home

have no place in the house you are building now.

The echoes you once answered

have no right to the woman you have become.

May you walk only forward,

feet steady on the roads you have paved with your own blood,

head lifted toward horizons that were once only dreams.

May you feel the sun kiss your scars,

may you feel the earth steady beneath your new steps.

May your hands know only the work of creation,

and never again the desperation of survival.

You who taught yourself to breathe underwater,

you who sang songs in the middle of the storm,

you who built light out of fragments of despair —

you are not meant to shrink back into what once tried to destroy you.

You are not meant to apologize for how brightly you burn now.

May you never again be convinced

that you are too much or not enough.

May you never hand your soul to those who cannot hold it.

May you never betray yourself to fit in small places.

And if the dark ever calls your name again —

and it will, for it knows the power you hold —

may you smile,

may you remember who you are,

may you remember the fire that lives in your bones.

Not all who enter the dark come back.

But you did.

You came back bearing stars.

You came back carrying the sky.

You came back new,

you came back whole,

you came back holy.

May you never forget.

May you never return.

May you rise,

always rise.

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