The Resurrection

She knocked me off my centre.

Not gently.

Not ceremonially.

But with the quiet force

of someone who does not notice

the tremor she causes.

I left that room unmoored.

Unstitched.

As if the scaffolding of my composure

had shifted an inch to the left.

She summoned the child

who knew the anguish of standing alone

when authority turned its back.

Something in me resisted her gravity —

unheard, outpaced —

my nervous system sounding the alarm:

her force moved faster

than I could steady myself.

And shame —

dark and deliberate —

inked beneath the skin,

then burning —

molten and immediate —

as though fire had found

the hidden fuel.

Anxiety clung to me like static.

Even the thought of seeing her again

made my heart dip.

Until the day

I needed her steadiness

more than reassurance.

And there she was.

She did not move.

She did not rescue.

She did not soothe.

She did not descend into my storm.

She remained.

Like a mountain before weather.

Like stone that has known centuries.

Like something that does not need

to prove its altitude.

The ground lost its gravity beneath me,

Yet she did not move.

In her stillness, my trembling had nowhere to hide.

In her certainty, my performance dissolved.

In her silence, I met myself.

As though a window had yielded

in a house sealed for decades.

Air entered.

Dust rose.

And something buried in the dark

remembered to breathe.