The Sun Keeps Me

The sun keeps me,

even when I am drowning in shadow,

she waits; golden, patient, unblinking,

a steady hand stretched across the sky.

I have laid in the pit of myself, unmoving, undone, and still she comes,

with warmth spilling over the ruins, gentle as breath against bruises.

She does not ask me to rise, she only reminds me that I can,

by pressing light into my bones until I remember the shape of living.

The world calls her merciless, a blaze too fierce to hold;

but in my darkest hours, she is the one who carries me, cradling me in radiance,

refusing to let me disappear.

And when I do not believe in tomorrow, the sun arrives anyway,

a promise I did not have to earn, like

a miracle stitched in fire.