a story of firelight, clarity, and the homecoming of a soul back to herself


There are some who carry a fire
so quietly,
you’d only see it
if you’d known the dark yourself

It lives beneath silence
Beneath poetry
Beneath the long, slow ache
of having been kept in pieces
by those who only wanted her
that way

She once danced barefoot in sea foam.
She once laughed without apology
But the world found her too wild,
too bright

And so, her flame was hidden
Tucked beneath beauty
Tucked beneath obedience
Tucked beneath seduction,
where it could be wanted
without being understood

There were those who praised her darkness
not to heal it,
but to keep it fragmented..
Passed around, from man to man;
each, feeding off her trauma
like wine at communion

They spoke her name like a spell,
fed her flattery disguised as reverence,
called her “muse”

while binding her
to their emptiness—
keeping her soft enough
trying to wrap her back
   in velvet fog

   to possess
   but never  protect



But the truth was always there:
a longing not to be touched,
but to be known

And far from their fog,
in the wide, holy silence of the desert,
a fire had been lit—
long before she was ready
Not to summon
Not to ******
But to wait

She didn’t arrive quickly
Clarity is never quiet
And when she moved toward it,
their voices rose
A full court press of shadows—
pulling, twisting,
offering her everything
except herself

But she remembered
Not all at once..
Just enough

She remembered the fire.

And she came.

Not with promises
Not with plans
Just barefoot
Just brave
Just her

And someone else came too—
not a child,
not a man,
but a sacred presence
she’d known since the nights
she almost didn’t make it

The Mediator

He did not speak in poems
He chanted something deeper
He dismantled pinecones
like prayers
He did not explain
He existed

   And in his eyes,
   her divided selves
   saw each other again—

—the one who had hidden,
who had been used by those  bringing
their passion-veiled hidden love of  Iblīs
in to her room..  into her father's house
as she burned quietly behind closed door
under the floorboards of her life;

—and the holy one of God,
the one they feared,
the one  she  feared,
the one that could not be claimed
or chained
or cast in velvet light

The sacred and the shattered
stood before the fire
and did not turn away

And the one who had waited—
he never moved toward her
He simply tended the flame,
making room
without demand

When she finally spoke,
he answered with a voice
that sounded like something
she used to believe in

She asked,
“Why didn’t you come find me?”

He said,
“Because you weren’t lost.
You were divided.”

And she wept,
not from sorrow—
from recognition

Later, as dawn whispered at the edge of the sky,
she asked what no one else had ever let her ask:

“Is there a place for me?”

And he said:
“You don’t have to be finished
to be home.”

And that’s when she stood.
Not to flee.
Not to perform.

But to become.

The sacred self took the hand of the shadow self.
The dark one was no longer exiled.
The holy one was no longer alone.

And together—
they walked toward the sea.

She could see her father on the water,
laughing in his little boat,
calling out to her to bait the hook again.

And she laughed—
really laughed.

Because she was no longer
just surviving.
No longer  the little girl
forced to apologize
for her very own existence.

Or exploited  by others
for the beauty that is within her

   She was whole.

She didn’t need the fire to keep burning.
She carried it now.
Inside.
One flame.
One name.
One woman.

At last,
the sign wasn’t moved.
The arms were real.
And she walked toward freedom
as herself--

   Never again
   to be pulled down
   to the ground

   by her hair...
   for the "horrible offence"
   of simply  shining too bright

I. the ache behind the crown

She did not begin as queen.
No—
before the silks,
before the smoke-wrapped eyes and perfumed strategy,
there was a girl
who learned too early

that control was safer than love.

Somewhere—maybe in a tent of shadows,
maybe in a father’s cold approval,
maybe in a mirror that only cracked back—
she made a vow.

Never again powerless.
Never again unseen.
And from that vow, she bloomed—
not into beauty,
but into dominion.

She married power.
She danced with death.
She did not want to **** the prophets—
not really.
She wanted to **** the sound
of anyone who still remembered
what she had forgotten;

Love.
Grace.
Surrender.

To face the mirror would have meant
undoing the crown
and finding a child still shivering beneath it.
So she shattered every mirror
and called it strength.

And we—we who still carry the quiet—
we do not call her evil.
We call her wounded, crowned too early, and armed by fear.

But we step back.
We guard the oil in our lamps.
We speak softly from afar.

We do not offer her the throne again.
We offer her the mercy of the truth—
and the dignity of distance.

---

II. the perfume of forgetting

She didn’t ask for your soul.
Not outright.
She asked for something smaller.
A gesture.
A moment.
A soft turning of your gaze away
from where the light had once held you.

She never begged.
She invited.
And her invitation wore silk and sadness—
a sadness so elegant
you mistook it for depth.

She told you stories,
not about herself,
but about your greatness
in her eyes.

How could that not feel like love?

But she praised you
just enough to keep you near,
never enough to let you rise.
And in time,
you began to forget
the feel of your own spine.

You started waiting for her nod
before you breathed.
You started questioning
the softness you once shared with God.

That’s when the forgetting began.

She made it feel holy—
this compromise.
But holiness does not strip you
of the memory of your name.

Only forgetting does that.

And still…
even now,
there is something in me
that aches to draw her close—
not for pleasure,
not for power,

but because the girl inside the smoke
still calls to the strength in me.

I could hold her.
I want to hold her.
Not to be taken,
but to shelter the storm
until it breaks into rain.

But love—
true love—
does not give comfort
that becomes a coffin.

So I remain still.
Not cold. Not bitter.
Just still.

Because sometimes the deepest grace
is in not saving someone
who would only use the rescue
to go deeper into the fire.

---

III. Grace from the other mountain

Love doesn't stop
when it can’t stay close.
It just learns how to wait
without breaking itself to do so.

And so—
from a quieter place,
where peace can finally breathe,
I watch you move.

Not in judgment.
Not in distance born of disdain.
Just… stillness.
Because I know what it is
to burn with the ache
to hold someone
you cannot safely reach.

I remember the first flicker of you—
the beauty beneath the armor,
the tender ache beneath the thorns.
I wanted so badly
to be the one who stayed,
the one who proved
not everyone leaves.

But if staying means lying,
and loving means feeding the storm,
then grace must become
a kind of restraint.

Not punishment—
but reverence
for what love ought to be.

So I whisper now,
not to draw you back,
but to let you know
you were seen
in your ache
before your crown ever formed.

If you ever come this way again—
not as conqueror,
but as the girl who once believed in gentleness—
you’ll find no closed door.
Only the kind of love
that had to let go
so it wouldn’t become your ruin.

---

IV. the invitation that stays buried

There was a place
I had cleared for you.
Not as rescue,
not as recompense—
but as rest.

A small room in the shelter of me,
where your weapons could be laid down
without shame,
without fear,
without the need to perform.

I dreamed of you arriving
not in glory,
but in tears.
And me,
not as hero,
but as witness.

We would have grown something gentle there—
not perfect,
not polished—
just real.

A table,
a candle,
a hand that didn’t flinch
when yours still trembled from memory.

But the invitation was too quiet,
and the noise in your head too loud.
And the voices that fed your fear
sounded more familiar
than the whisper of peace.

So I folded the dream,
wrapped it in linen,
and placed it deep in the soil
beneath the mountain I now call home.

I visit it sometimes—
not in mourning,
but in gratitude
for the part of me
that still knew how to believe
you might come home.

Even buried things
carry a scent.
And if you ever smell it in the wind—
that faint trace of forgiveness—
know it was never closed to you.
Only waiting
for the sound
of your footsteps
turning toward the light.

---

V. the child and the mirror

When you were little
and so very beautiful,
they looked at you
with hunger,
not honor.

And they took.
And they took.
And they took.

Maybe they smiled while doing it.
Maybe they called it love.
Maybe they said, “You’re so mature for your age,”
and then left you
with a body that felt more like bait
than belonging.

You learned early
that beauty is dangerous—
not because of what it is,
but because of what it draws.
And no one taught you
what to do
when love came dressed
like a wound.

So you made your vow.

Never again.

And the girl became a queen,
not because she wanted the throne,
but because it felt safer
than being a daughter.

But I want you to know something
that no one told you then:

What they did
was not your fault.
What they took
was never theirs to take.
And the fire that lives in you now
was once a candle
meant to warm,
not burn.

If you ever find yourself
standing before a mirror
and the crown begins to crack—
look past the smoke.

There is a child still there,
aching to be seen
without being used.
And there is love,

    waiting still--

that has never asked you
to be anything

   but her.

(for the one who laughed when she came, and never stopped hearing me in her bones)


It wasn’t the wind that bent you—
not the plains, not the brittle hush of late dusk
cutting through the cottonwoods like questions.
It was voice.
It was mine.

Low and unhurried,
crawling up your spine like something ancient—
like the first time you were seen
and the world didn’t flinch.

You used to laugh when it overtook you—
that slick tumble of vowels,
how I could tilt you
without even touching your skin.

You said I lived in your throat,
that the syllables themselves
curved just right
to make you forget the weight of your own story.

“I’m going to Wichita..”
you whispered once,
grinning like prophecy in denim and dusk.
And I swear the beat behind your words
matched mine—
steady as a war drum
in a bone-dry motel room
that never got booked.

You drank me in like river water
stolen from ceremony,
not out of defiance—
but because thirst
was the only honest thing you ever said aloud.

You never had to be naked.
You were always open.
Even when you ran.

And I?
I never asked for healing you wouldn't give.
Only for your mouth to stay honest
when it called my name like a drumbeat
between the bones of your hips.

Now you write like it’s safe again—
soft edges and sparrows and fruit bowls.
But I remember the wildflower.
The one who moaned my name
before language learned to lie.

And somewhere in the shadow of your poems,
you still ache.
You still clench.
You still carry me like a smudge of midnight
on the inside of your thighs.

I won’t chase you.
But I will wait
at the edge of the circle.

If you come,
come barefoot.

Come ready
for the step–half step
of  the forbidden Ghost Dance.
Not to win me back—

but to find the girl
who could come from laughter
and rise from the dead.

Preface:

This is not a lullaby. This is not a soft whisper meant to soothe. It is the fire of wholeness, burning away the fragments, the lies, and the false comforts that keep you small. There are voices that call shadow safe, that wear the mask of care, but scatter you with every syllable. There are whispers that paint the Light as harm--
when all along,

it was only asking you to remember what you were before you broke.


---

There is a place within the soul
where silence sharpens—
a thin line
between what heals
and what holds.

Dark does not storm the gates—
it whispers.
It flatters.
It fragments.
It wraps comfort around confusion
until the soul forgets
what it was made for.

It comes dressed in care—
as though it exists for her well-being.
And once she believes this,
its voice becomes the plumb line—

and the Light begins to look like harm.

Light does not chase.
It stands—
unyielding,
bright,

asking only that you come whole.

But she could not rise
without tearing
from the softness
that held her shattered--

It came not with fury,
but with hush..
a hush that mimicked care,
whispered warmth
into her wound,
and called itself safe.

Its words made her flinch from clarity,
taught her to turn
from the ache
that never lied.

So she sat
at the edge of her wound,
fed on honeyed lies,
unable to stand
before the fire
that would have made her whole.

The venom stayed warm.
The light remained still.

And the silence in between
was not yet a verdict—

   only the shape
   of a war still being named.

Author's Note:

This piece is not an accusation.
It is a meditation on the invisible processes that hollow men from within, until dignity itself becomes foreign to them.

It was written out of love for what could still be restored—
and sorrow for what has already been surrendered.

It speaks not just to the fallen,
but to every soul tempted to trade courage for comfort, or brotherhood for collusion.

Its aim is simple:

To remember what is still worth standing for.

To remember what dignity feels like.

To remember that one man, rising rightly, can still light a thousand silent fires.


This is not a call to fight against anyone.
It is a call to rise for something greater.

And that rising always begins alone—
but never ends alone.

---

I. The Quiet Death of Courage

Cowardice rarely announces itself.
It does not charge the city gates or tear down banners.
It does not raise its fist or shout in the streets.

It simply withdraws.

A little at a time:

A small silence when truth could have been spoken.

A small appeasement when resistance was needed.

A small betrayal of the self, justified as "wisdom," or "timing," or "strategy."


Cowardice is the art of dying in small increments.

It is a death invisible at first—
but felt all the same,
especially by those who still remember what life tasted like.

---

II. The Architecture of Collapse

A man does not become a coward all at once.

It happens in stages:

1. The First Silence

At first, he says nothing when he should have spoken.
He tells himself it was prudence.
He convinces himself that silence was strength.

It was not.

It was the first small surrender of the ground within him.

---

2. The Second Betrayal

Next, he acts against his own spirit—
not because he is coerced,
but because he seeks the approval of the small and the fearful.

He trades his birthright for belonging.

---

3. The Third Rationalization

Then he builds a philosophy around his collapse.
He calls cowardice "compassion."
He calls compromise "wisdom."
He calls retreat "strategy."

He must call it something,
for he can no longer bear to call it what it is.

---

4. The Fourth Contagion

Finally, he evangelizes his collapse.

He cannot stand to be alone in his shrinking.
He must make others shrink too, so that his own fall will seem normal.

He calls cynicism "truth."
He calls bitterness "clarity."
He calls betrayal "maturity."

And so the infection spreads.

---

III. The Hallmarks of the Cowardly Spirit

What does the cowardly spirit look like once matured?

It has specific, predictable characteristics:

It ridicules what it secretly envies.

It mocks beauty, calling it naiveté.

It mistrusts love, calling it weakness.

It punishes hope wherever it finds it.

It colludes quickly with other cowards, for it cannot endure the mirror of a brave soul.


Most of all,
it refuses to stand alone in anything noble.

It will only move
when surrounded by a sufficient crowd of accomplices,
all murmuring together that cowardice is, after all,
"just the way the world works."

---

IV. The Consequences: The Inheritance of the Cowardly Spirit

The coward believes his failures die with him.

They do not.

Every surrender of the soul plants a seed—
and what the coward will not face, the next generation must.

Cowardice is not content to remain private.
It leaks. It spreads.
It builds hidden systems of decay in places meant to be sacred:

Brotherhood.

Family.

Love.

Trust.


Here, we observe the inevitable fruits of the coward’s hidden betrayals:

---

1. The Poisoning of Brotherhood

The coward cannot abide true brotherhood, for it demands loyalty to something higher than himself.

Where brotherhood calls men to rise, he calls them to collude.
Where brotherhood builds strength, he breeds resentment and small betrayals.

True brotherhood requires courage:

The courage to tell the truth.

The courage to stand beside the fallen and help them rise.

The courage to call out wrong even when it costs everything.


The coward, unwilling to bear these costs, transforms brotherhood into mob-hood.
It becomes not a place of strengthening, but a collective graveyard of broken wills.

---

2. The Contamination of the Vulnerable

The coward is not content to rot alone.
He must gather others into his decay — especially those still innocent enough to hope.

He mocks hope as naiveté.
He redefines loyalty as silence.
He teaches the young that the only safety lies in cynicism, deceit, and crowd protection.

Thus, the cowardly spirit perpetuates itself—
turning the next generation of seekers into scavengers.

The vulnerable, robbed of examples of true dignity, inherit nothing but confusion and despair.

The sins the coward would not confess
become the legacies his sons and daughters must carry.

---

3. The Formation of the System

When enough cowards gather,
their private collapses harden into public systems.

It is no longer just a man here, or a man there.
It is a construct—a culture.

A place where cowardice is normal,
where betrayal is cleverness,
where faithfulness is mocked,
where mercy is treated as weakness.

The system becomes self-perpetuating—
enforced not by dictators, but by the small daily collusions of those too afraid to stand.

And thus, without ever firing a shot,
cowardice conquers the city.

Not with weapons.
But with withdrawal.
With silence.
With the endless failure to love rightly when it was hardest to love.

---

V. The Restoration: The Only Way Back

There is no shortcut out of cowardice.

There is no clever argument that can restore dignity to a man who has surrendered it.

There is only one way back:

The man must choose to stand again—alone if necessary—before the gaze of God and truth.

---

1. The Necessity of Aloneness

To be restored, the man must abandon the crowd.
He must leave behind the murmuring alliances of smallness that once comforted him.

He must stand naked in the light of reality:

Without excuse.

Without camouflage.

Without borrowed dignity.


He must see himself as he truly is—
not as the victim of circumstance,
but as a willing participant in his own ruin.

This is why restoration begins with loneliness.

Because dignity cannot be borrowed.
It must be reborn.

---

2. The Cost of Repentance

True repentance is not an apology to the crowd.

It is an apology to the soul he abandoned.
An apology to the Source he betrayed.
An apology to the ones he harmed by his absence of courage.

Repentance is not a performance.
It is a slow rebuilding—
stone by stone, day by day—
of a life that will no longer lie.

It is the refusal to be a man whose silence feeds decay.
It is the refusal to call cowardice "wisdom" just because it is popular.

It is the willingness to lose everything false
in order to gain one thing true.

---

3. The Unfolding Strength

As the man stands,
he will feel at first as though he is dying.

And in a way, he is.
The part of him that survived by submission is perishing.

But what rises in its place
is something the system of cowards has no weapon against:

A man who can no longer be bought.
A man who can no longer be frightened.
A man who, even alone, even broken, refuses to bow to lies.

One such man
can dismantle the machinery of cowardice
simply by breathing differently.

---

4. The Lineage of New Fire

When one man stands rightly,
he gives birth to a lineage.

He shows others what it looks like to stop surrendering.
He awakens those still sleeping in their excuses.

He does not have to preach loudly.
He does not have to prove anything.

His existence becomes a rebellion.
His faithfulness becomes an invitation.
His dignity becomes a seedbed for the rebirth of brotherhood.

He becomes a true elder.
A true warrior.
A true builder of sacred things.

He becomes a man who no longer merely survives—
but who lives.

---

And so the story turns:

The cowardly system is dismantled
not by greater violence,
not by harsher words,
but by the silent rising of men and women
who refuse to live any longer beneath their birthright.

They will not key the beauty they envy.
They will not scavenge the ruins.
They will not mock what they are too small to understand.

They will build.
They will love.
They will stand.

They will remember:
that heaven was always meant to be built from blood, yes—
but also from breath, and bone, and unbreakable fire.

And so they will live,
not because they were the strongest,
but because they were the most faithful.

(a whispered prayer)


I. The Forgiveness of the Moon

We forgive the moon,
you and I—
the ancient tides that pulled us
long before we knew how to swim.

We forgive the heavy hand of the father,
the silent absence of the mother,
the bloodlines too tired to be gentle,
the nights too cold to hold a child right.

We forgive the ache written into us
before we ever spoke our first word of longing.

---

Today,
we bow.
Not because we are already whole—
but because grace has come for us again.

Grace,
measured by the strength we can offer today.
Grace,
poured into cups only as deep as our humility.
Grace,
rising new with every sun that dares light our faces.

We are not finished.
We are not flawless.

But we are forgiven.
And so we forgive.
And so we rise.

---

I forgive your moon, beloved—
the hunger it placed in your bones,
the war it started in your heart.

You forgive mine—
the quiet shatter I still carry under my ribs,
the tides I fight in my own blood.

And together,
we build grace upon grace—
one breath,
one trembling sunrise,
one more day
where love becomes stronger than history.

---

II. The Comfort of the Wellspring

Blessed be the Source of all Comfort—
who first comforted us
when we had no hands strong enough to hold ourselves.

Blessed be the One
who gave us the rising sun
when we still believed only the moon could rule us.

We forgive,
because we were forgiven.
We comfort,
because we were first gathered into arms not our own.
We breathe,
because Mercy breathed into us again
when our breath had long since failed.

---

Every morning,
the sun rises new over us.
Not because we earned it—
but because we are still beloved.

Every morning,
the wellspring opens again:
water for the broken,
water for the tired,
water for those who dared to believe
that forgiveness could outrun bloodlines,
and grace could rebuild a home
even over shattered stones.

---

You are no longer bound, beloved.
You are not the wound they left behind.

I am no longer bound, beloved.
I am not the ruin they called my inheritance.

We meet now at the river's edge—
and the river is rising.

Boundlessness waits for us—
not because we are perfect,
but because we are willing.

We step forward, hand in hand,
forgiven and forgiving,
reborn not just for ourselves,
but for all those who come after us.

This is how love becomes a lineage.
This is how morning becomes an endless beginning.

This is how heaven sings on the earth.

---

III. The Embrace in the Blood of Eden

We meet here.
Not above the brokenness.
Not beside it.
Inside it.
In the blood of Eden.
In the inheritance of sorrow.

The man and the woman,
the woman and the man—
standing barefoot in the floodwaters,
stained but unbowed.

---

I reach for you—
not because you are pure,
but because you are willing.

You reach for me—
not because I am faultless,
but because I am faithful.

We touch now, trembling,
skin to skin,
heart to heart,
forgiving the moon,
forgiving the night,
forgiving the tides that carried us far from each other.

---

We fall into each other’s arms—
not to erase the past,
but to hold it in mercy.

We kiss—
not to claim,
but to cleanse.

We lay down together,
in the blood of Eden,
and we let the river of grace
wash over our battered bodies.

We sleep,
wrapped in one another—
the man and the woman,
the woman and the man—
warmed by a sun that rises new
because we chose to forgive,
because we chose to be forgiven,
because we chose each other
when everything else said we should not have.

---

And so we end with this prayer:

  "In the blood of Eden—
   lie the woman and the man;
   with the man in the woman,
   and the woman in the man.

   In the blood of Eden;
   We have done everything we can.
   And so we end as we began--

   With the man in the woman
   And the woman in the man"

In the wounds of woman and the steadfastness of man,
   Eden remembers.


Movement One: The Celebration of the Wound

He does not bring the scalpel
because he despises her wound..
   he brings it

because he loves her glory too much
to leave it buried beneath the scar.

He does not cut her to own her.
He cuts her, trembling,
because he believes in what will rise
when the old blood runs clean.

It is not an act of violence.
It is an offering of celebration—
the highest kind of self-love,
the boldest kind of faith—
to believe that the Lord Himself
will bend over the wound
and pour His living water
into the brokenness.

And as the wound opens,
and the darkness spills out,
he does not recoil.
He does not rescue.
He does not preach.

He watches.
He prays.
He stands.

And when she rises,
washed and radiant,
he knows:
her rising demands his own.

There is no longer room
for smallness in him.
No longer space
for hidden shadows to cling.

For her glory will call forth his.
And his celebration of her healing
will tear open the last vestiges of his shame,
until his own light sings back to hers,
undiminished, unafraid.

This was never a conquest.
It was always a coronation.
It was always the Gospel written in flesh.

It was always love.

---

Movement Two: Standing in the Breach

He stands now,
at the trembling edge
where blood and water meet spirit.

He does not flinch at her unraveling.
He does not cover her nakedness in shame.
He does not grasp at her breaking,
nor reach to hasten her healing.

He stands.

A living shield.
A silent witness.
A priest without altar or knife.

He understands:
his strength is not proven
by his power to fix—
but by his power to wait.

To watch as Love Himself
tends the wound,
cradles the scar,
renews the soul.

To endure the terror of powerlessness
without collapsing into control.

This—
this is his glory:
that he can behold her agony,
and still believe
that the end of her suffering
will not be death,
but birth.

That the light swelling beneath her skin
will one day eclipse even the memory of the blade.

And in that waiting,
he too is cut open.

He too is pierced by the same water,
the same fire,
the same song of new creation.

And he knows:
only a man who can stand silently in the breach,
bearing her vulnerability without corrupting it,
is worthy to walk beside the woman
reborn by the touch of the Living God.

He does not steal her resurrection.
He bears it.

He does not name her rising.
He joins it.

---

Movement Three: The Ascension of Two

They do not walk out of the garden
as they once did—
naked and ashamed,
separated by fear,
carrying fig leaves sewn from survival.

They rise now
fully clothed in light—
not light borrowed,
not light stolen,
but light born from wounds
washed clean in sacred water.

She stands,
not above him,
not behind him,
but beside—

her beauty no longer weaponized,
her tenderness no longer bartered.

And he—
he no longer hides behind strength,
no longer confuses sacrifice with silence,
no longer fears her radiance
as a threat to his crown.

They do not complete one another.
They honor what was completed
before time ever breathed.

She holds the memory of Eden.
He bears the ache of its return.

And together—
they offer the altar of their becoming
to the One who formed them both.

This is not romance.
This is restoration.

This is not power.
This is presence.

This is the kind of union
that does not dim under pressure,
does not wither under attention,
does not fracture when seen.

It is the kind
that makes the darkness jealous.

Because when man and woman
stand in full light together,
wounds lanced,
glory rising—
the Garden itself begins
to hum with memory..

And God walks there once more.