Living Letters- Origins

I knew you before I knew you.
Not just in the way of faces or names, but in the way a fragrance lingers
the turn of a phrase, the sharp laugh caught mid-breath, the weight of silence folded just so.

I carried those fragments of you across years,
 and when you came unmasked, I recognized the sound of you in a new shape.

It was like the ghost of a song made flesh,
 like finding the door I’d been pressing against suddenly open, and you standing there, already fierce, already flame.

I leaned in. Too quickly, maybe.
But I could not help myself.
Because I had been waiting for you to look up.

And now these pages are what I offer you.
Words you spoke, written into ledger, pressed into your hand,
kept with ink and illustration.
They are yours. They were always meant to be yours.

They were meant to build for you a new Kingdom, one where you never knew pain, never knew grief. If I may earn one thing, it would be to see you stand in rooms where you are never too much, your laughter is never too loud and I...I may be allowed to stay.