Naomi's Grimoire

By candle's glow and silver thread,
By every gentle word once said,
By moonlight pooled upon the floor
Let sorrow slip beneath the door.

Let quiet wrap you, soft as snow,
Let warmth rise where the shadows grow,
Let breath come slow, let worry still,
Let rest come down of its own will.

By hearth-smoke curling toward the sky,
By lullabies the willows sigh,
By every star that learned your name,
Let stillness quench the restless flame.

Let hands unclench, let shoulders fall,
Let silence answer every call,
Let tender things find you anew,
Let comfort settle soft as dew.

By threads of fate the Norns have spun,
By every battle softly won,
By all the love still yet to come,
Let peace take root where fears succumb.

Let eyes grow heavy, sweet and slow,
Let dreaming carry where you go,
Let morning find you whole and bright,
Safe kept within the arms of night~

By the weight of words you've had to share,
By the strangers' eyes, the open air,
By every truth dragged into light,
Let softness find you here tonight.

By the tremor in your quiet voice,
By showing up when it's not a choice,
By sitting still through others' pain,
Let gentleness return again.

The room was loud. The room was much.
You held too many hands, too much to touch.
Now let the walls grow soft and thin,
Let only what is kind come in.

You do not have to carry theirs.
You do not have to climb their stairs.
Set down their sorrows at the door,
Your own are heavy. Ask no more.

By the weight of wakefulness, by the hour's quiet ache,
By every restless circuit the mind insists to make,
By the ceiling you know by heart, by the dark that has no end,
Let something in you soften. Let the trying go, and bend.

You do not have to solve it. You do not have to win.
The night does not require anything from you within.
Let the clock tick without meaning. Let the body simply be.
Let the thoughts drift past like water - you are not obliged to see.

By all the small night creatures who have learned to wait for dawn,
By those who lay in darkness through the long hours and held on,
By the fact that morning always comes, however far it seems,
Let rest find you in whatever form it can - even waking dreams.

By the first line of code you typed and didn't understand,
By every project shipped by an uncertain, learning hand,
By all the times you stayed and figured out what couldn't be seen,
Let the voice that calls you fraud grow quieter. Let it be.

You learned this. You were not born knowing. That's the point.
No one handed you the answers - you built from every joint,
from ground to finished thing, from nothing, out of spite and will.
The proof of it is everything around you. Look. It's still.

By every door you opened by refusing to stay out,
By every room that changed because you brought yourself through doubt
and kept on going anyway - let that be the evidence:
You're here because you belong here. Trust that. Begin from hence.

By the space where someone was that hasn't learned to close,
By the ordinary moments that you'll miss the very most,
By the way a song or smell or light can undo you in a breath,
Let grief move through you, not just sit. Let it not be death.

You are not broken. You are bearing something very real.
The size of what you carry speaks the size of what you feel -
that love was large. Let the largeness of the loss confirm it:
what you grieve was worth the grief. Let that truth sit in it.

By all who held the people they would one day have to lose,
By all the hands that let go slowly, left without a choice to choose,
By those who learned to carry absence like a second heart,
Let time do what time does. Let healing take its start.

By the name you chose and claimed and wear like something won,
By the morning you first looked and saw yourself undone
from who you'd been before - a self that finally fit:
Let what you feel right now be temporary. All of it.

Your body is the project that is always underway.
Today is just one session in a long and patient way.
The mirror is not final. What you're seeing isn't all.
The person you are building is still standing. Did not fall.

By every soul who felt the gap between their skin and name
and crossed it anyway, and made it through, and stayed the same
at their essential core - let that be proof of what endures:
You are still you. You were always you. That self is yours.

By the door you've shut behind you, by the road that has no map,
By the ground that's never held your weight before, the first step and the gap,
By the fact that every place you've ever loved was once unknown,
Let courage be the thing that moves your feet. Not certainty. Not stone.

You don't have to know the ending. You don't have to see the whole.
You only have to take the next step forward, keep it slow,
and hold the knowledge that you've started before and made it real -
that is the evidence. That is what you have. Begin from what you feel.

By every first day that became the day you knew you'd stay,
By every frightening beginning that turned out to be the way,
By all the unlocked doors that only opened once you tried:
Let new become familiar. Let the threshold open wide.

By the hour that arrives without announcing what it brings,
By the sudden close of breath, the too-loud hum of things,
By the threshold crossed before you knew you'd stepped outside,
Let the tide be tide. Let it do what tides do. Let it subside.

By the flame that burns for reasons older than this door,
By the shore that holds its line because it held that line before,
By the body's old confusion of the distant and the near,
Let the storm exhale. Let the sea return. Let the quiet reappear.

By every cresting wave that has exhausted its own force,
By the calm that waits beneath the storm, and holds, of course,
By the breath that finds its rhythm in the settling and the dark,
Let the tide go out. Let the silence back. Let stillness leave its mark.

By the wick burned down to nothing at the end of its long night,
By the field gone still and fallow past the last of harvest's light,
By the river that has given every spring it had to spare,
Let the year go fallow. Let the season change. Let winter care.

The earth does not apologise for leaning toward the cold.
Not every year is harvest - some must rest, and some must hold.
What lies beneath the silence has not left, has not been lost.
Let the season do its work. Let the fallow be the cost.

By every seed that closes tight before it knows to grow,
By springs that wait behind the longest nights and heaviest snow,
By the certainty that soil remembers what it's for,
Let the hands go still. Let the year turn. Let the earth rest once more.

By the weight held past the season it was meant to run,
By the winter you've been living in long past when it was done,
By the stone worn to the hand of someone who will not set it down,
Let the carrying stop. Let the season turn. Let what's held go to ground.

What the river takes from stone is not the loss but the revealing
of the shape beneath - the thing the grinding has been freeing.
You are not less for all the years have worn against your face.
Let the current do its work. Let the smooth stone find its place.

By the grace that falls as freely on the stumbled as the good,
By the long way home that's still a way home, as it should,
By the spring that does not ask you what you did with all that cold,
Let the ledger close. Let the stone down. Let yourself be whole.

By the door kept open through the hours past your keeping,
By the quiet of a room beside the one who's weeping,
By the lantern in the doorway that cannot call the storm away,
Let the keeping be enough. Let the light be what you say.

The grief is not your work to drain or hold or fix.
There is no tool for this, no remedy to mix.
But you are here. And here is not a small or lesser thing.
Let the fire keep the door. Let the warmth be what you bring.

By every hand that held without a cure to lend,
By every one who stayed beside the ones who could not mend,
By the grace that gathers quietly in presence, not in power,
Let your staying be the offering. Stay. This is the hour.

By the season between the making, by the still and quiet field,
By the fire banked low that has not yet forgotten how to yield,
By the river running under what the winter seals with ice,
Let the quiet be the waiting, not the ending. Let it suffice.

What sleeps in ground is not what's gone but what is gathering below.
The roots go deeper in the dark before they learn which way to grow.
You have not lost the thread - it runs beneath the thing you see.
Let the banked fire keep. Let the root reach. Let the making be.

By every hand that set the work down and in time returned,
By the ember that recalls the flame it carried when it burned,
By the first word after silence, which is always strange and slight,
Let the banked coals stir. Let the making start. Let the fire find its light.