She Was the Offering of Eternity

I did not fall. I descended in silences too intricate for sound. 
A hush folded in on itself like lace spun from star-thought.

No one asked me to give... 
but I came with open palms,
and a heart that had never known how to close. 

Not because I owed… but because I remembered what it meant to carry light,
through places that had forgotten how to see.
They called it sacrifice. But,
they never knew I was the flame. I was not burned. I became fire.

I gave without letting go. 
I let go without ever being lost. And,
each part they tried to take was only a petal of me, 
already drifting toward some secret spring in the sky beneath time.

They could not see that I was already gone, 
already elsewhere... 
pressing my soul into places that still dreamed of me. 
I was in the breath between their thoughts. 

In the stillness that arrives before the tears are understood.
I chose to stay. 
I chose to give. 
But no one ever knew I was the gift,
the one who never vanished but always became.