Safety arrives
Not as a feeling
But as a vocabulary
A set of quiet words
I am only now
Learning how to pronounce
The therapist speaks them
Gently
As if offering me
Small stones
To place in my pockets
When the wind rises
Here
Now
Enough
Words that feel
Too soft to trust
Yet somehow
They hold their shape
In my shaking hands
Inside me
Old languages resist
The dialect of bracing
The grammar of silence
The fluent fear
I learned too young
But these new words
Glow faintly
Like lanterns
Hung along a path
I never knew
Was mine to walk
I think I’m okay
I say
And the sentence feels
Like a fragile bridge
Stretching across
A long dark ravine
The therapist nods
As if to say
That every language
Begins with trembling
That even the smallest word
Can be a doorway
If spoken honestly
And in that moment
I feel it
A new lexicon
Forming in my chest
A quiet alphabet
Of safety
Learning how
To speak me back
Into myself