I used to think beginnings were doors
clean edges, bright hinges, a simple yes.
But beginnings are oceans.
They pull at your ankles
while you’re still practicing how to breathe.

I am scared in the way
a seed must be scared
when it realizes the dark was not punishment, only preparation
and now the soil is loosening its grip,
and the world is asking for evidence.

So I run from the daylight.

Not because it is cruel,
but because it is honest.
Because it shows me my own face
without the mercy of shadows,
because it makes my prayers measurable.
Look! This is what you asked to become.

Daylight is a courtroom.
It cross-examines the dream I once whispered into the ceiling
like a thief testing a lock:
Give me a life, any life,
give me rooms and mornings,
give me a reason to be tired.

And it did.

Now I am learning
that miracles have weight.
That answered wishes
arrive wearing work boots,
and they track mud through the house
and sit heavy on the furniture
and demand you rearrange yourself around them.

I thought I wanted fire.
I did not understand
that fire is the life you carry.
That it eats.
That it needs oxygen.
That it will ask you
to become a forest,
and then to become the ash.

Some mornings
I feel the new life inside me
like an unfamiliar organ
necessary,
but tender,
and I keep touching it
just to make sure it’s real.

I keep waiting for the universe
to say it made a mistake.

But the day keeps opening
like a mouth full of light,
and I keep stepping back,
and still I cannot call this fear ungrateful.

Because what is exhaustion if not proof of arrival?

I am tired
the way a shoreline is tired
endlessly receiving what it cannot stop,
shaped by waves
it once begged the moon to send.

I am tired
the way a ladder is tired
of holding someone
between one roof and the next, rungs worn smooth
by a thousand small acts of courage.

I am tired and it feels like a privilege,
like being given a name
and having to answer to it.

So if I keep running from the daylight.

I am not fleeing life.
I am adjusting to the altitude
of the prayer I survived.

I am learning how to live
in the aftershock
of getting what I wanted.

If the universe answers prayers
by turning them into weight,
into mornings that demand attendance,
into a body that must keep showing up,

then I wonder
whether the miracle was the asking,
or the endurance it now requires.

I used to think faith ended
when the wish came true.

Now I know that faith begins when the universe stops listening
and starts watching.

If the universe answers prayers
by letting them breathe,
by giving them hands and a name,
by placing them directly in front of you
then why does standing in the life I asked for feel like
trespassing?