Delectation of the Soft

I could have held your anger,

that twisted scrap of metal in the mind.

I was prepared for the ferocity,

the jagged edges I already knew by heart.

I wanted to trade my hurt for yours—

same scars, different maps—

to take your fire and forge it into

something better than a burn.

​But I was a broken mountain,

rigid, wound tight,

braced for a collision that never came.

Instead, your grief arrived like water.

It soaked into the marrow of my stone,

shattering the desire to stay hard,

drowning the certainty of my fear.

​I realized then: I was never afraid of the fierce.

I was terrified of the soft.

​Softness is the rattling machine of the world

grinding to a sudden, prayerful halt.

It is the total silence where the nerves

begin to feel the canvas of the dark.

You cannot dive into it;

you must ease into the quiet

as the eyes adjust to the loss of light.

​I missed you most in your anger

because I saw my own reflection there.

But the softness was always hiding, too—

a brutal prayer cried into the void,

nestled in the small, cramped spaces

between the wreckage and the rage.

​I am learning now to sink

into these muddled, aching waters,

finding the sweetness in the surrender,

the delectation of the terrible,

terrible soft.