Lanterns at the Edge of a Forest

This is for my friends who have always been the lanterns in my darkness and the light they never cease to show me.

The warning signs were there,

like cracks running silent

through ice in late winter,

but I called them patterns,

not fractures.

I stepped deeper anyway, into the trees

where branches tangled

like hands that wouldn’t let go.

At the forest’s edge

my friends held lanterns high,

their voices drifting like wind through leaves:

turn back,

there’s danger in the thicket.

But I wanted the shadowed path,

so I walked until their light

thinned into silence.

Inside, the air grew heavy.

Love turned to ash on the tongue.

Silence pressed

like a fist against my ribs.

One night, I stared at the bottle-

amber glass,

a false kind of fire

whispering it could burn away my pain.

I almost believed.

Almost unmade the years

I had been held whole.

Instead, I reached for the phone.

Her voice broke through like daylight:

you Are Never Stuck.

There Is Always A Way Out.

And something in me opened

not like breaking,

but like water finding its source.

I cried out to God

and he bent low,

threading a path

through root and stone.

Step by step,

I came back to the clearing.

And at the edge of the forest

the lanterns still burned,

my friends waiting,

their light patient,

their love

unmovable.

There are seasons in life where we wander into places we were warned not to go. Sometimes love feels like a forest that promises safety, only to become a tangle of shadows. In the middle of that darkness, I almost lost myself. But what pulled me back were the voices of my friends, their lanterns of truth and love reminding me that I was never really stuck and that there is always a way out.