A Saltwoven

Dear God, they say it’s 2025, a chance to start anew, but how can I start when I’ve lost the map that leads to You? The fireworks lit the sky; I saw colors blaze and die, is that what I am, a fleeting burst in the empty sky? What could I have been if I’d chased the dreams I left behind? Would I have been someone stronger, someone less confined? Why did I let these scars carve silence into my name? Why does it feel like I’m the only one carrying this shame? If I hadn’t burned those bridges, would I have found my way? If I’d chosen the right words, would they still have stayed? Am I a prisoner of the choices I can never undo? Or could I have been free, walking hand in hand with You? What would it feel like to wake up and not dread the day ahead? What would it mean to carry hope instead of the weight of things unsaid? If I’d made better choices, could my heart have been whole? Or am I destined to be this shadow, tethered to a fractured soul? Why does every good thing feel like it was mean...

Seventeen winters, and it feels so wrong,  like I’ve lived too little, but I’ve been here too long.  Another year older, but what have I gained?  Only scars on my soul, only tears that remain. What is a birthday but a cruel little lie,  a marker of time meant to pass me by?  There’s no joy in the candles, no spark in the flame,  just smoke in my lungs and the weight of my name. Seventeen years, and what do I see?  A hollow-eyed stranger staring right back at me.  The boy I once was, now buried and gone,  and the man I’ve become is a life gone wrong. What am I, but a breathing regret?  A body that moves, a mind drowning in debt,  not the kind you can pay with coins or gold,  but the kind that haunts you, that never grows old. A Love and now it’s gone, like a whisper in the wind,  she saw all my cracks, all the ways I’d sinned.  Her eyes turned cold, her touch grew thin,  I tried to hold on, but I couldn’t win. ...

Need? What’s needed, baby, if not a life with you? Not the loud kind, But one so simple and holy. Us, growing old, weathered by time. A house tucked into a quiet corner of the countryside, not big, but ours. Walls that carried our laughter, our arguments, our love pressed into every beam, every inch of the floor we’d walked a million times. A backyard that smelled of autumn leaves and summer’s ripe afternoons. Our little piece of the world, a patch of green where we’d plant dreams. And in the middle of it all, Our daughter. God, babe, she’d have been ours, but you know what I mean when I say, she was more mine than anything. Her tiny body curled into my chest, her heartbeat drumming softly into mine as she slept in that baby carrier strapped to me. We’d walk like that, me and her, and you beside us, to the supermarket down the street on Saturdays. The sky would blush with sunset as we filled our bags with things we didn’t need. It'll be heavy with groceries, but not as heavy as the...