I used to think I knew what it meant to find the right one, someone you would cross whole skies for, someone you would hand your maps to without keeping a route for yourself. That was her, or that is what I told myself while the sails were full and the way ahead looked open. I let her see the parts of me I had kept from everyone else. The quiet places. The long way around. The things I never trusted to careless hands. Then one night she turned from me. Zero warning. No kindness in it. She let go as if everything we carried weighed nothing at all. After that, I kept moving because I did not know how to stop. It was drift more than living, days folding into each other, the hull groaning, my thoughts circling the same old wound. I was far from anything I could call home, too numb to know what direction meant, caught in the pull of something broken long after it should have released me. Then you came near and nothing in me stayed the same. Nothing sudden. No lightning strike. Your presence was enough to change the strain of living. Turn the mast Catch the sun Feel the current start to run Hold the line Let it breathe Something new beneath me now I had grown used to carrying pain like it had earned part of my soul. I answered when spoken to. Kept my hands busy. Let the hours pass. Then there you were by the forward rail, calm in a way that asked for nothing. You never reached into the wreckage. You never asked me to explain every mark. You stayed near, and being near you made breathing come easier. It happened slowly, the way real things often do. A little less weight. A little more air. A steadier course than I had known in months. I was far from anything I could call home, too numb to know what direction meant, caught in the pull of something broken long after it should have released me. Then you came near and nothing in me stayed the same. Nothing sudden. No lightning strike. Your presence was enough to change the strain of living. Solar sails out Drawn and wide Stellar currents by my side Back in motion Back awake No more sinking in that ache What was lost What let go Will not choose my course now I thought one leaving might decide the rest of my life. That was the lie I lived inside. Then you arrived and made room around the hurt. Without erasing it, you simply outshone it. You looked at me and I felt no measure there. You stayed beside me and I remembered how to begin again. I was far from anything I could call home, and now I know home was never a place. It was the part of me I thought was gone for good, the part your presence brought back into reach. Now when the mainsail catches and the whole sky opens ahead, I do not think about who turned away. I think about you, and how simply being near you was enough to bring me back. Under better sails now, I keep going. If you want me beside you, that is where I’ll be.
