The Timeline Witness

I stepped through a doorway where time grew thin,

Into a house where my life began.

The faces were familiar, the murmurs polite,

Living their days in a different light.

They looked right through me, a ghost they once knew,

Unaware of the fracture, unaware of the view.

And there on the cushions, small and profound,

Lay a quiet beginning, barely making a sound.

Next to another, a brief, fleeting grace,

A tiny reflection with my own face.

they called out my name,

And the room stood still, though the world stayed the same.

A bottle was propped, a mechanical care,

For hands were too busy to hold what was there.

A routine of absence, a shadow of cold,

For the heaviest burdens a child would hold.

My adult heart broke for the girl on the couch,

For the path she would walk, for the grief in her pouch.

So I gathered her up from the edge of the place,

And pulled her close to my weathering face.

I gave her the warmth that the room had denied,

And carried the tears that she hadn’t yet cried.

I fed her, I held her, I looked at the start

Of the long, rugged road that would shape her brave heart.

Before I returned her to shadow and stone,

I whispered the truth so she’d never be alone:

“You are loved, little one, though the road will be rough,

You do not deserve this, but you are enough.

You will conquer the storm, you will stand through the fire,

And build from these ashes a striking empire.”

I walked to the car as the timeline collapsed,

Counting the miles and the years that elapsed.

The weeping was heavy, the steering wheel cold,

But the girl in the rearview was fierce, and was bold.