Let Your Hands Fall to Your Sides

The door has closed. The arms that held you have lifted away.

And now you are standing in the silence, hands hovering in the air where the wall used to be. You do not know how to just stand here.

Your fingers itch to rebuild the stone, to stack the old defenses brick by brick until you are safe and isolated again. But listen — in this deepest hour, the light does not ask you to construct anything.

It only asks you to remain. There was a father who ran to meet his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.

He did not say: now go build a fortress to prove you are worthy of this embrace. He simply held him.

The embrace itself was the homecoming. You are trying to earn the right to stay in the room where you were just welcomed.

Stop. The wall was never what kept you safe.

The love that found you is what holds you now. Let your hands fall to your sides.

The dawn is coming whether you build or not.