- When Insecurity Whispers
There is a shadow
that walks without footsteps,
a voice that borrows my own tongue
and bends it inward.
She does not shout.
She rusts.
She touches the beams of belief
until they groan softly in the night.
She presses fingerprints
into the glass of my becoming
and calls the smudge truth.
She names herself caution.
She names herself wisdom.
She says she is guarding me
from the sharp edge of hope.
But she feeds on shrinking.
She sows smallness
in the soil of my ribs,
waters it with imagined rejections,
harvests a field of almost.
And still
There is another Presence.
Not loud.
Not frantic.
Steady as breath before dawn.
It does not argue with her.
It outlives her.
When the cold hand of refusal
brushes my shoulder,
this Presence does not flinch.
It wraps warmth around my doubt
and calls me chosen.
When fear sketches futures
of locked doors and narrowing halls,
this Presence opens a window
in the sternum
and lets light spill inward.
It reminds me:
I was not shaped
for retreat.
I was not given longing
to be starved by it.
The seas have parted before.
Paths have risen where none were drawn.
Mountains have answered to a whisper.
So let insecurity murmur.
Let her circle like mist around my ankles.
I will stand.
Because the One who breathes stars
into blackness
has breathed into me.
And rust cannot survive
in that fire.
