Heart, Unweathered

The world will hand you noise

and call it truth.

It will sell you versions of yourself

you never asked for—

ones that shine,

but don’t stay lit.

You’ll learn that goodness

isn’t loud.

It doesn’t trend,

it doesn’t beg to be seen.

It’s the quiet decision

to stay kind

in a room that feeds on cruelty.

I’ve seen light

get traded for relevance.

Watched purity shrink

beneath applause.

And still—

something in me refuses

to let the dust become home.

Maybe holiness

was never about perfection,

but the effort

to keep your hands clean

while the world keeps

handing you dirt.

Maybe love

isn’t the absence of anger,

but the refusal

to return it.

And if I ever lose my way,

may I find the strength

to soften again.

Because the truest thing about me

shouldn’t be

that I survived,

but that I did

without hardening