Therapy Part 6 Learning Safety Words

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