Jordan A. Leturgez

Not when the sky is perfect,
not when fear has folded,
but in the half-light of trembling hands
you strike the first small sound.
A single nail into the wall
holds up a future--quiet, stubborn--
and the room remembers how to echo.

Make it happen: whisper it to the marrow,
to the hollow places that learned to stay small.
Feed it with plain tools: coffee at dawn,
a list, two breaths, the courage to begin again.
Build like someone who knows how to heal--
one careful stitch, one stubborn seam,
until the garment fits your living skin.

There will be storms that practice drowning,
voices that map the route of retreat.
Let them pass like weather. Plant your feet
in the soil you've chosen; let roots answer the rain.
Remember the river does not wait for permission;
its insistence carves mountains into maps.

Make it happen not by grandness alone
but by the patient geometry of doing:
small acts, fierce as sunlight through blinds,
pieces gathered until a shape is formed.
Call your fear by name and set it to work;
teach your doubt to carry stones.

When the night asks if you are tired,
say yes--and then say still--go on.
Because making is a kind of mercy:
to yourself, to the people who will warm themselves
at the fire you started with trembling hands.
Make it happen. Let your life be proof
that a single, certain step can become a road.

They sell paradise in glossy pages--smiles laminated,
palm trees like friendly swords, sunsets edited for perfection.
We fly in like moths to a neon mothership,
carry our quiet in hard-sided suitcases, check it at the gate.

The first day tastes like champagne and permission:
salt on our lips, strangers' hands that feel like borrowed warmth,
laughs clipped to camera shutters, promises stamped with sunscreen.
Under the boardwalk, the sand is a slow crowd applauding our forgetfulness.

Night blooms fluorescent--cocktail umbrellas like tiny flags of surrender.
We toast to freedom and call it courage when we swallow our doubts.
The bar keeps our names in receipts and our voices in the grout;
arguments rehearse themselves between the ice and the ashtray.

Affection is a hotel key--glossy, easily lost,
left in pockets with cigarette butts and consolation candies.
We trade apologies for sunsets, make bargains with the tide:
I'll pretend I don't hear, if you pretend you won't leave.

The tide takes everything it can--rings, notes, a pair of sandals--
leaves behind broken shells that gleam like accusations.
Morning arrives with a hangover of cheap perfume and cheap talk,
and the ocean keeps its secrets in the white foam it spits back.

We return sun-kissed and hollow, souvenir shops full of calm lies:
magnets that say "Wish you were here" and postcards for shame.
The pictures are sharp; the memory corrodes--soft edges at first,
then a slow rust that eats the frame until the smile is just a question.

Toxic vacations: sugar-coated fractures, postcards sealed over breaks.
We pay in credit cards and borrowed courage, counting sunsets like a debt.
Yet next year the brochure arrives, glossy new, humming like a temptation,
and we fold up the map of our better selves to fit inside a carry-on.

Sometimes the cure is small and brutal: unpack, open each pocket,
and let the sand sift like truth--grain by grain, it finds the floor.
Sometimes the lesson is mercy: a bruise that fades beneath a different sun.
But most often we keep the tan and pack away the ache,
book another flight and call the wound "a story worth remembering."

We unclasp the small, rusty bones of yesterday--
fingers tasting the cold iron of old promises,
and lift them like explained maps,
learning at last the names of our wounds.

Sun arrives as a patient witness,
burning the thin varnish of fear.
It finds the places where we hid our voices
and stains them gold; the songs spill out
like water from a cracked pot, generous and surprised.

There is a language that only unshackled feet speak:
the soft percussion of steps that do not ask permission,
the hush of breath that no longer counts its cost.
We trade the grammar of survival for an accent of daring,
and the world, for once, listens.

Liberation is not a single door opened;
it is the rustling of rooms within us,
the slow uncoiling of a bird's wings after winter,
the way a river remembers the sea and rushes toward it.

We plant our names in places that once forbade them,
root them deep as anchors and light as prayers.
Hands that trembled learn the shape of holding--
not to grasp, but to offer: food, truth, forgiveness.
Laughter becomes the currency of mornings.

And when the old gates fall--no clatter, only a wind that carries away the last lock--
we step through with pockets full of small, ordinary brave things:
a child's first clear question, an apology that reaches across a table,
the courage to say I was wrong, I am learning, I will stay.

Freedom tastes like a door left open at dusk,
like salt on lips after long, earnest travel.
It is not spotless. It bears the scab of every healed cut,
the history of every hand that pushed and did not relent.
It asks patience, vigilance, the willingness to repair.

Still, once unbound, we move: a sea of soft uprisings,
a chorus of feet, of seeds, of promises, of truth.
We become the small miracles we were taught to fear:
unafraid of light, unafraid of loss, unafraid to be tender.

Tonight the stars seem nearer, as if on purpose.
We lay our maps on the grass, trace new lines with bright, stubborn fingers,
and name the places we will not leave to shadows.
Liberation is the work of living whole, of being honest with our hands.
It is the music we finally allow ourselves to dance to.

There is a light beyond your window--thin, impatient,
like someone who has walked all the way here and won't wait.
The couch holds the shape of your evenings,
the kettle remembers every ritual,
but the world outside is an untied shoelace,
asking to be knotted into your next step.

Get out for more than air. Go for weather that argues with your bones,
for streets that whisper names you've never answered,
for alleys that fold themselves into secret rooms of sky.
Leave the small map you've learned by heart;
there are countries of sound and color waiting
with passports made of possibility.

Take the day that smells of wet cement and coffee,
take the night that tastes of streetlight and song.
Practice a courage that isn't loud--just steady,
the kind that eases your hand into the pocket of the universe
and finds a coin bright enough for a new beginning.

You will be awkward at first--two left feet at dawn,
fumbles at sidewalks, laughter that arrives early and stumbles.
That's how growth arranges itself: imperfect, insistently human.
You will also meet people whose names are warm like bread,
whose stories leak light into your marrow.
You will learn the language of cats and trains,
and the grammar of getting lost and then returning.

If fear is a locked door, curiosity is the long key--
it slides and clicks and finally turns.
Do not deny yourself the thrill of an unlocked life.
Collect small proofs: a sunset that makes you weep for nothing,
a stranger who becomes a memory you can slot into your bones,
a map smeared with coffee stains and yeses.

Return sometimes, but do not live in the doorway.
Carry the landscape inside you: the hush of the sea at three a.m.,
the honest glare of a noon market, the hush of someone's prayer.
Let those places teach your hands new ways to hold the world.

Get out for more than scenery. Go for the story you haven't told yet,
for the song you pretend you can't sing, for the truth that trembles
beneath your usual answers. Step until your shadow lenoers
and the horizon learns your name.

When you come back, bring the weather with you--
damp courage, bright wonder, wind-dusted teeth of laughter.
Set them on the table beside your old routines
and watch how the house rearranges itself
to let in a life that finally remembers to breathe.

It is not forged in stadium lights alone--
it is hammered in the hush before dawn,
when the city is a slow exhale
and feet find rhythm on an empty road.
It learns the language of early mornings,
the grammar of returning after falling,
each bruise a punctuation in an unfinished sentence.

This heart keeps time like a weathered drum,
beat after beat carved from patience and salt.
It remembers the taste of loss--bitter, sharp--
and turns it into a kind of sugar for motion,
a fuel that burns clean and stubborn.
It knows the weight of waiting, of quiet training,
and the strange tenderness of pain.

A champion's heart is small sometimes, like a fist,
closing to protect a fragile hope,
then opening wide to hold teammates and strangers.
It is a lighthouse that refuses to wink out
when fog presses hard against the shore.
It is all the promises whispered to oneself
in moments when no one else is listening.

Triumph arrives like a thin, surprised rain:
not the purpose, but proof that the weather changed.
Fame may pass through the room like a guest,
but the heart keeps the dishes warm for others,
learns to carry victory with both hands,
and to fold sorrow into the lining of courage.
It hums the same song whether the crowd roars or sleeps.

And when the body tires and medals cool,
the heart keeps counting small, brave things:
the extra mile run in rain, the hand offered,
the return to the mat after being downed.
Champion is not the crown held high alone--
it is the steadiness to stand again,
to keep moving toward the light you can only catch
one breath, one step, one stubborn beat at a time.

So listen: in the quiet between rounds,
there is a drum that will not stop.
Its rhythm is plain and inexorable--
a promise made again and kept.
That is the heart of a champion:
not perfect, not solitary, but unspent,
pushing forward until the world is gentler for its passing.