Stay with your heart.

Not only with what it knows.

With what it has been holding.

There is something

that has stayed tense there.

Not because it wanted to.

Because it did not know

how to soften

without losing itself.

Stay there.

Not trying to fix it.

Not trying to move past it.

Just staying close enough

to feel what happens

when the heart

no longer braces

against what it already knows.

Something begins to relax.

Not all at once.

But enough.

Enough to feel

that holding is changing.

Enough to feel

that tenderness

is not the same

as weakness.

Healing does not ask the heart

to forget.

It lets the heart

stop carrying the same way.

Stay with that.

And notice

what begins to loosen

the moment you stop

asking the heart

to stay hard around it.