Anchored.

[Ra****]

I don't carry the face of someone who's been erased from every room he entered,
but the marks are there, etched deeper than skin, from years of offering everything
and receiving echoes in return.
I've looked straight into the gaze of those who accepted my devotion
like loose change, then spent it elsewhere without a backward glance.
I've given until my hands shook empty,
only to watch them reach past me for someone shinier, someone simpler.
I'm nobody's first thought on a hard day, nobody's name that rises unbidden in the quiet.
I've collected "you're important" like pressed flowers—
beautiful lies that wilt the moment another option appears.
The truth stings clean: I'll always be the reliable shadow,
the one left holding the door while the real ones walk through.
Love came, I fought for it, bled for it,
and still ended up watching it choose the exit.
I've clawed out of pits so dark the light felt like accusation,
reached summits only to find them empty, wind howling my own name back at me.
I stood at the edge once, looked down into the familiar nothing,
and stepped off—expecting the fall to finally match the loneliness.
No one reached. No one noticed the absence.
The drop was patient, almost kind,
swallowing the noise of every time I wasn't enough.
But somewhere in that endless descent, a small hand found mine.
Not to pull me back up to where I'd been rejected,
but to hold steady while the world kept spinning without us.
Now, in the soft gray of morning, I set the table with deliberate care—
coffee just right, toast cut into hearts she pretends not to notice.
Her sleepy eyes meet mine without demand, without comparison,
and for the first time the act of providing doesn't feel like auditioning.
Throughout the hours she drifts between play and rest,
head against my chest while I read stories in low tones,
she surrenders weight I've carried alone for decades.
Her trust isn't earned through performance; it simply exists,
like gravity, pulling me into something solid.
I guide her, correct her gently, wrap her in rules that feel like safety nets,
and in return she gives me the one thing no one else ever did:
the certainty that my presence matters, that my strength has a home.
Evening settles slow—dinner plates warm, her laughter spilling over the rim,
then quiet as she curls into me, small body trusting every inch of mine.
I stroke her hair, whisper goodnights that carry promises I mean to keep,
and feel the old free-fall slow, then stop.
In the midnight hush, when the house breathes soft and deep,
I draw her close, claim her with careful hands and steady voice.
She yields like water finding its shape,
and in that surrender I find the shape of myself—
not fractured, not optional, but necessary.
The eyes that once stared back hollow from the mirror
still linger in memory, asking if the emptiness was ever really outside me.
But tonight, with her breathing even against my skin,
I look again and see something new:
a man who was always meant to hold, to protect, to stay.
She didn't fix me.
She simply needed me enough
that I finally stopped drifting
and became the anchor
I've been searching for all along