What I Refused to Surrender

This year I sat,

with grief and with pain,

with stories that made me

uncomfortable and whole and real

And with my whole body I listened.

And I started writing

what was whispered

though every sentence challenged

who I thought I was to say anything at all.

I said it anyway.

I learned the difference

between mystery and concealment,

between grace and silence,

between endurance and obedience.

And I stopped calling survival holiness.

So I wrote a world

that looks lovely from a distance

and monstrous up close.

Walls tall enough to pass for mercy,

systems that smile while counting bodies,

and the men who call evil necessary.

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But mostly I stayed

with the ones who were erased,

misremembered, footnoted,

praised for their composure

while bleeding out quietly.

I could not rescue them.

But I could tenderly hold

their stories and voices and hopes and dreams

even when it cost, even when it

made so many people,

so very uncomfortable.

Especially then.

This year,

when grief surfaced sideways,

I did not disappear or look away.

I held my eyelids open

and I looked and looked and looked

and I held the line.

I crossed the river.

I carried what mattered.

And when I look back,

I do not see a pillar of salt,

I see only what I refused to surrender.