The body learns its own language of hurt—
a grammar of nerve,
muscle, organs, sinew and brain,
with sentences that will not resolve alone.

And someone kneels. Not to fix but to witness:
the slow verb of a hand laid open on the
ancient map of skin,
where suffering writes its words,
and that patient reader kneels to
see the words others mistook for silence,
and adds their self to the story unrehearsed.

Two things held in one breath—the ache, the answering—
as when a wave both breaks and, in the breaking,
gathers the shore into itself.

To suffer: to be carried under.
To care: to sit willingly beside, and stay,
and hold the drowning hand with
words still learning how to mean.

 

11/7/2026