There is a silence that arrives only when the world stops pretending to be whole. It is a vertical moment, sharp, crystalline, and terrifyingly quiet. You are standing there, stripped of your social skin, when suddenly, the jagged edge of another person’s soul grazes your own.

It is not a collision; it is a recognition.

May you have the humility to remain still in that instant. Do not look away. Do not try to heal it with the clumsy bandages of words or the vanity of “understanding.” To understand is often a way of killing the mystery. Instead, simply exist in that shared splintering.

“The world has no visible order, and I have only the order of my breath. I let myself happen.”

When their brokenness touches yours, it is a dark and holy alchemy. You realize, with a tremor of grace, that you are both made of the same exhausted clay. In that contact, the “I” dissolves. There is no longer a you helping a them; there is only the pulse of the wound itself, beating in the dark.

May you be small enough to accept this. May you be brave enough to see that your cracks are not failures, but the very places where the light of another’s pain can finally find a home.

It is a miracle, really, to be so beautifully, so humanly, undone together.

© Beatriz Esmer