You say that loving someone  is loving their weaknesses..
How could I have loved yours,
When I had never yet encountered my own?

I was simply a girl,
Looking from behind a too-clean window at the world,
Thinking love was soft laughter and perfect timing—
Little did I know that
It was grace in holding someone that may not know how to be held.

I had no idea how to love this way.
Now I do.

Because I know now what weakness is.
I wear it like second skin.
My weakness is the tremble in my voice when I say, "I'm fine,"
It's the quiet collapse of my spirit when no one's watching.
It's the way some days all I want is to be held-
not fixed,
not saved,
just held.

And I wish-
I wish you had loved my weakness, too.
I wish you had held me where I didn't know how to hold us.
I wish you had stayed when I grew small and stopped being easy to love.

Even one word from you back then.
Would have folded me-
Not in fear,
But in surrender.
In that soft aching way a soul gives in to the one it knows.

But you didn't say it.
And I didn't wait.
Maybe both of us were just scared-
Me of not being enough,
And you of having to carry too much.

But what I do know is-
I would have bent like those wild sunflowers in your sunshine!