Let me speak life...
You not only have value but you are value, I have nothing to give to you but posture myself to receive. Thank you for being brave, for showing me what sacrifice looks like. Thank you for inspiring passion to writhe through my bones again as I allow myself to feel. I couldn't possibly look away from the suffering so instead I stared. I watched, I embraced the pain, welcomed it, for to care for another means to come alongside, to position oneself so as to experience in their place. Not as a tutor, teacher or helper but as friend, confidante and servant.
I come to you repentant, full of sorrow that makes me wish the sun would never again rise. Tears wept for you would not change your circumstances nor would compassion alone but please allow me to say, with sincerity, that you have a home in this place. A place where you would feel alien, afraid, misunderstood. Please know that it is in this land that you are honoured, that you will have worth lavished on you as though you were a prince, for that is what you are.
There is a place in the ocean where two seas meet, with currents so different that it creates a tide though there be no shore. Let our love confound such waters. Let the differences between us melt into nothing and merge so that all remains is us, body to body. Skin that's the same, hearts that follow the same repetitive thud thud thud. I am you and you are surely my image too.
As I behold you allow me to say that you are known here to me. I promise that I will try to faithfully love you and dress you with a future so deserved. To even write this feels shameful, there should be no need. Thank you for seeing me and not running away. Thank you for the way you choose to listen, aware of my faults but glad to have me all the same. You honour me. You are not the dirt upon your feet nor the fear in the caverns of your mind. You are not a migrant or a nameless, faceless creature, you are chosen, you are loved, you are Rahim, Aylan and Samira. You are not an object, nor a nuisance, a problem to be fixed. You are a life, precious and wanted, worth so much and decorated staggeringly. You have had trouble,but you are NOT trouble. You are welcome here.
