JENNY M GUERRIER

The Shared Current

We are not two cliffs facing the same storm, nor a pair of scales that tip toward the heavier hand. We are the river and its banks— when your current runs thin, I rise to keep the channel clear; when my edges crumble, you carry the water that rebuilds them. Strength is not a throne we fight for. It is a place we leave empty so the other can step into it without apology. Weakness is not a debt. It is the open door through which the other’s care walks and finds a chair already pulled out. We do not keep score of who carried what. A ledger would turn us into merchants of each other’s breath. Instead we look for the third thing: the meal neither of us could cook alone, the road that only appears when both of us walk it, the silence that holds because both of us chose not to fill it. There is no victory that leaves the other smaller. There is no defeat that darkens the room we share. There is only the light we make by each protecting the other’s flame exactly as we would want our own flame protected— not from a distance, not as a favor, but as the natural motion of two hands that have learned they warm each other best when neither is trying to hold the fire alone.