*"Courage" —For the buried girl who learned to call for backup_

Flying around the courtyard,  

Mounting the walls —  

Shadows of the old me still circling,  

Clawing at the stones like they own this place.  

I remember when these walls were my whole world.  

When the sky was a rumor I stopped believing in.  

When silence wasn’t peace — it was punishment.  

Tied down. Screaming out.  

Rope biting into wrists, into ankles, into hope.  

No soul out here to save me,  

To beat the monsters that lived in my head  

And the ones that wore familiar faces.  

I thought courage meant not screaming.  

I thought it meant swallowing the sound,  

Making myself small enough that the chains didn’t rattle.  

I was wrong.  

Courage is screaming anyway.  

Courage is the sound echoing off these walls  

Until something — someone — answers.  

She is breaking.  

The girl I buried years back is  breaking out.  

She is hurting.  

Years of hurt, pressing against her ribs like a second heartbeat.  

She is sobbing.  

Not weak sobs. The kind that split earth and let light in.  

She needs you.  

The you I stopped talking to when I went silent.  

The you I thought wouldn’t understand.  

She needs us.  

The “us” I forgot existed when the monsters got loud.  

The “us” that’s been here the whole time, waiting to be called.  

Come, come, come.  

Not later. Not when I’m better. Not when I’m healed.  

Come now — to the courtyard, to the mess, to the breaking.  

With us together,  

My shaking hands and your steady ones,  

My screaming and your listening,  

My buried and your believing —  

We can fight together.  

Not pretty fighting. Not clean fighting.  

The kind where we drag each other out of the dark  

And call it love. And call it grace. And call it _enough_.  

We can win.  

Not because the monsters disappear.  

But because we stop facing them alone.  

Because the courtyard stops being a prison  

And becomes Glory House —  

A place with cracks where the light gets in,  

A place with echoes that answer,  

A place where _she_ is no longer tied down.  

We can win.  

We _will_ win.  

Because courage was never the absence of fear.  

Courage was saying her name out loud:  

_Come._  

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