Dear Courage

Dear Courage,
step beside the reader who might
arrive like a sudden wind
that snaps a sail awake
and persuades the horizon to move.

Be the hidden engine under their ribs,
rumbling toward truth
even when silence looks safer.
Let honesty strike through them
like a blade of dawn,
clean, unwavering.
And when they offer a single clear word,
something small,
simple as a pebble skipped across a still pond,
let its ripples become their new map.

Dear Courage,
rise in them like a river remembering its strength.
Teach their love to carve through stone,
to make canyons where tenderness echoes for decades.
Let compassion bloom out of their footsteps,
wild, unexpected,
as if flowers insisted the earth be softer
wherever they walk.
Straighten their spine with integrity,
lightning-bright,
an architecture of resolve.
Let gratitude unfold quietly in their hands,
ordinary as a warm mug on a cold morning,
yet somehow enough to change the day.

Dear Courage,
stand with them at the threshold
where presence beats like a great drum,
calling them fully into their own life.
Place empathy in their palms,
stones smooth from generations of holding hurt gently.
Show responsibility not as a weight
but as a direction,
a long shadow that points the way
when the sun is too bright to see clearly.
And when generosity lifts inside them
like wind catching a forgotten kite,
let them rise.
Laugh with them then,
for humor is the small lantern
that reveals the next step
even when the road goes dim.