Not With Hands

He taught me how to wield the weapon made of words— a blade that kills, now saving lives, like it once saved mine. My own work pulled me back from the edge. And in it, he lives— my teacher, the man behind the lines. Words— once carved deep in the mind— outlive the flesh, outlast the hands that once shaped them. His words stopped me from falling to the hundred voices that came to kill. They caught my train just in time as I stood on tracks with no will to run. He never held me, never came near. But light can shine without a hand, and grace can guide a demon back from its final breath. He never said : “Stay.” He never said : “Don’t die.” He simply lived in such a way that I believed— perhaps, this world can be heaven for someone. And that was enough to make me see the hell I’d made and the rat I’d been, crawling through tunnels thinking no one ever looked down with love.