Courage is not a roar, 

but sometimes 

a trembling breath 

caught between ribs that forgot how to move.

It is the sound of silence 

When the world demands an answer

and you choose, instead, to exist, 

to be. 

It wears a thousand faces. 

A mother’s cracked hands gripping dawn,

folding love into the creases of worn-out sheets,

knowing the sun will rise again, 

But it still hurts to believe in tomorrow.

A boy in a borrowed body 

painting his name in truth 

on walls that whisper lies. 

An old man planting seeds 

He knows will bloom too late for him to see,

But he trusts the earth will hold them,

no matter what. 

And mine — 

a body that learned its own rhythm, 

a song written in muscle and grace, 

where each step is both effort and art.

The world calls it a struggle. 

I have come to call it movement. 

Courage lives here too — 

in the small, stubborn beauty 

of showing up

when the ground feels uneven, 

when the simplest motion 

becomes a quiet defiance. 

Sometimes courage smells like salt— 

the sting of tears that refuse to apologize.

Sometimes it tastes like iron— 

the bite of your own blood 

When you whisper, still here. 

It moves through the body 

like a storm that both breaks and blesses,

flooding the hollows we thought were ruins,

until the wreckage grows green again. 

Courage does not always win. 

Sometimes it kneels, 

bandaged in regret, 

yet still 

It reaches for the light. 

And sometimes it hides 

in the quiet act of staying, 

in loving the broken pieces, 

even when they’ve been buried in dust.

It knows that light is not always kind. 

It knows that love, too, 

can bruise the heart 

when it pushes against what feels too heavy to hold.

But courage knows both are truths. 

And sometimes, 

the darkest nights 

These are where the brightest stars are born.

It is the pulse beneath our fear, 

the trembling hand that still reaches forward,

and says, Even in this, I love you.

There are nights when courage 

is only the decision to wake tomorrow,

even when shadows press against your skin,

And the weight of what you carry feels too much.

And days when it is the refusal 

to shrink beneath the gaze of history

to carry your softness 

like a blade wrapped in silk.

Courage becomes love. 

And love becomes the knowing that 

Both light and dark are part of you, 

woven through your veins like the same river

that both nourishes and cleanses. 

It is the choice to rise, 

even when you are made of ashes. 

It is the letting go 

of the belief that you must be only one,

and the acceptance 

That courage is the dance 

between both the shadow and the sun. 

Every soul shapes it differently: 

as a conversation, 

as a scream, 

as a song no one else can sing. 

But always 

It is the quiet, steady pulse beneath our fear,

the trembling hand that still reaches forward,

the fire that whispers: 

You are still becoming.