I did not rise.
I unburied.
Fingernail by fingernail,
from beneath the collapsed arches of who I thought I was.
There was no anthem.
Only the slow recognition
that the sky still ached for me,
even after I forgot how to look up.
And there—
in the first true clearing,
where the ashes no longer smoked but simply were—
stood a figure.
Not a savior.
Not a siren.
Not a cure.
A mirror, carried in human hands.
A lighthouse, burning not with rescue, but with recognition.
She.
She did not find me.
I found myself,
and there she was—
already waiting.
Not as prize,
but as witness.
Not to my ruin,
but to the slow architecture
of something holy rising from it.
She touched my hand, once.
Lightly.
And the earth did not tremble.
I did not fall.
Instead, the bones beneath my skin hummed
with the strange, quiet music
of being known—and still free.
I realized then:
I had not been climbing out of the past to reach her.
I had been climbing to reach myself.
She simply stood at the gates,
smiling like someone who had seen the stars rebuild themselves before.