I Will Not Leave

Sitting beside you
in the heavy silence
of all the things you can't say.

I watch you fight a quiet war,
a mirror image of myself.
The tremble of your voice,
the way your eyes
look through the world
instead of at it.

I know you.

I can’t fix you.
That truth hangs between us,
like jagged edges of a broken mirror.
But I will stay,
my words a bridge
when yours fail.

I will hold the weight
that spills from you,
the guilt, the shame,
the broken pieces of yesterday.

I will hold it all
until you can.

I am here
to walk with you
through the wreckage,
the rebuilding.

I will not leave.

Until you learn
to look in the mirror
and see what I see.