The assignment

You were never meant to be enough,

Nor to climb the ladder into love’s arms.

You were meant to be love —

Still, steady, undemanding, whole.

They told you to search,

To hustle through hearts and mirrors,

To trade masks in the market of longing.

And all the while,

You were the thing you sought.

Love is not hidden in distance,

Nor waiting at the end of achievement.

It was woven into your breath,

Sewn into the silence between your thoughts,

Rooted in the marrow of your becoming.

You do not earn the sun —

You awaken to it.

You do not deserve the river —

You step into it.

Turn inward, dear soul,

Not to fix, not to perfect,

But to remember.

Your attention is the key,

Your essence the home.

Be still, and let the chisel fall —

You were the sculpture all along.