Where fear no longer leads

Once I moved through the world
like a house with every door open.
The smallest wind
could scatter the rooms,
and every voice stepped in
like an uninvited guest.

All I knew
was the trembling of my own footsteps.

My fear
a narrow creature,
quick-boned,
bright-eyed,
sleeping with one ear open
to the language of twigs.

It drank from puddles
memory left behind
and knew the shape of every shadow.

And so it led me.

We walked carefully,
as if the earth were glass
and grief a crack beneath the surface.

And somewhere beneath it all,
deep under
the floorboards of my heart,
something slept.

Not pain.
Not sorrow.

A lion.

Curled in the warm cave of my ribs,
breathing slow as winter soil,
a quiet sun of golden comfort.

I did not know he was there
until the day
I had to walk again
through the old rooms of memory.
The walls remembered.
The silence spoke my name.

And then
a movement behind my shoulders.

Not a roar.
Just weight.
Just warmth.

A lion rising
into the space behind my heart,
a sun of fur
at my back.

He did not devour my fear.
He simply walked.
Slow as mountains,
steady as tidewater.

Since then
I walk differently.

Fear still walks ahead of me,
its nervous ears turning
towards every whisper of dark.

But behind me
moves the lion.
I feel his breath at my neck
a quiet sun.

Then I know:
fear may remain.
It simply
does not lead
anymore.