Shifting Slowly

I love you from here—
from this quiet stretch of sky between us.

From this distance,
your wounds don’t reach me,
and mine don’t tremble under your gaze.

Here, judgment fades like headlights disappearing down a long road.
Here, the laughter that once curled around my name
falls short.

You see only the light I allow through—
a constellation I arrange myself.
From here, love feels safer than the gravity of your expectations.

I once tried to love you without borders,
to let your version of me take shape.
I bent myself thin,
pressed into walls that never moved,
until I shattered—
pieces scattering like sparks
against the dark.

For a while, the world went dim.
I couldn’t tell where I ended
or where your beliefs had settled in my bones.
I thought the girl I once was—
the laughing one,
the dreaming one,
the one who could sit in silence and feel whole—
had slipped into some unreachable galaxy.

But she flickered back.
A soft pulse.
A stubborn star refusing to die out.

So I followed that glimmer.
Let every fall teach me the shape of rising.
Let hurt, shame, guilt, and grief
melt into something molten,
capable of becoming new.

Reborn, again and again,
into different versions of light.

Eventually I gathered the pain—
tight, burning—
and hurled it into the sky.
It burst open,
scattering into a map I could finally read.

Now when I look up,
I recognize myself.
Every star a piece I thought I lost,
gleaming back at me.

And from here—
this wide, breathing distance—
I can love you
without dimming myself
to do it.