They prayed my gifts would starve.
Not because they were false,
but because truth has a habit
of arriving barefoot,
tracking mud across polished religion,
across curated smiles,
across the expensive silence
people mistake for peace.
So I am teaching my hands
to remember poetry again.
If they cannot bury my voice,
they will have to survive its bloom.
They have called me many things,
yet there is one thing no rumor
has ever been able to touch—
Since 2015,
my solitude has been chosen.
Not from lack.
Not from fear.
Not because love forgot my address.
I simply refused
to make a covenant
with what had never learned
to carry its own soul.
I stopped performing.
Stopped polishing my reflection
for crowds that applauded masks
while crucifying authenticity.
Tell me—
Where is this depth
everyone advertises
like another luxury brand?
Where are the people
who heal where others can see them?
Why is restoration whispered
while performance is broadcast?
Is it because healing bleeds?
Because becoming beautiful
first requires becoming broken?
Because no filter has yet been invented
for the face of someone
learning to forgive themselves?
Or have we become nothing more
than the dreams we pinned
to digital walls—
collections of sunsets,
quotes borrowed from strangers,
lives rehearsed
until even loneliness
forgot its own name?
Whatever happened
to the love that stood guard?
The kind that never asked permission
to protect what Heaven entrusted.
The kind that would rather lose comfort
than surrender covenant.
Where are the warriors?
Or has every sword
been melted into currency?
Has every defender
opened a marketplace
inside the chambers
where courage once lived?
Still...
I remain foolish enough
to believe love wins.
Not popularity.
Not influence.
Not wealth.
Not the loudest voice
inside the room.
Love.
Always love.
It survives every empire
that mistakes itself for forever.
And perhaps the greatest tragedy
is that some of you,
reading these words,
still believe they belong to you.
You mistake honesty
for invitation.
You mistake vulnerability
for availability.
No.
The one these verses seek
has only just begun
to glimpse the shoreline
of what lives inside me.
She has not yet crossed the ocean.
She has merely seen
its first impossible wave.
To love me
is not to collect affection.
It is to inherit weather.
The moment you stand beside me,
storms will learn your name.
You will discover
how expensive loyalty becomes
when truth enters the room.
You must know
how to stand when unseen winds
test every promise you've spoken.
If faithfulness
has ever been negotiable to you...
if devotion
was something measured
against convenience...
if your heart wandered
whenever comfort disappeared...
then do not mistake admiration
for readiness.
This road has no room
for half-made vows.
And if you are the woman
destined to carry my heart,
know this—
It is not fragile.
It has survived
fires that never made the news.
It has buried versions of itself
that no one mourned.
Treat it
as something Heaven trusted you with.
Do not cradle it
only when it is easy to admire.
Hold it
when the night becomes unbearable.
Guard it
when the world invents reasons
to abandon it.
Love it
with the same ferocity
you expect it to love you.
For I have learned
that even the deepest rivers
must sometimes change course
to remain alive.
And though my hands
still carry the scars
of every season
that tried to silence them—
I will keep throwing my gifts
into the wind.
Because gifts were never given
to decorate graves.
They were given
to resurrect gardens.
And when every argument
has exhausted itself,
when every kingdom
built on image
has finally collapsed
beneath its own reflection,
there will remain
one undefeated language—
Love.
It always arrives
looking weaker
than the things that oppose it.
And somehow,
it is always
the last thing standing.