✍🏼Your eyes keep watch like lanterns in the dark they know the tide they pull in those they meet. That knowing never sleeps. It stays awake, a small rebellion humming under skin. When I look at you, a mirror turns. Something answers that I almost name, a scent of somewhere older than this life. And I, who always fled, do not run now. I stand inside the opening, unarmed, and let the old fear drift like smoke away. Your mind moves underneath your words like light beneath deep water, rising when it wills. I wonder how no fearless heart has come, one made of flame and not of trembling, to take this softness in its open hands and give it back, and give it back again. God knows, you were made to be held, to be loved by day, by night, by every moon, and to feel the whole sky lean down to love you back. -NB #poetry