For the ones untouched

 Sometimes I watch them—my baby nephew, my little sister—and I think, God, how beautiful it is to be so new to the world.

Their laughter comes so easily. Their shoulders don’t know how to tense yet. Their eyes don’t scan for danger in every room. They don’t carry the heaviness I do, and I pray—honestly, I pray every day—that they never have to.

It’s a strange kind of ache, loving someone that soft when you’ve lived through things that hard.

Sometimes I catch myself just staring at them, memorizing how light they still are. How their smiles reach all the way to their eyes. How they can fall asleep without worrying if the door is locked or if someone will raise their voice tomorrow. How they are still untouched. They may still be tiny, but I still worry.

And I think about myself at that age. I wonder when exactly it changed for me—when the air got heavier, when safety became a thing I had to chase instead of just feel. There’s grief in that. But there’s also this overwhelming, tender hope that maybe—for them—it’ll be different.

Maybe they’ll get to keep their softness longer. Maybe they’ll never have to carry the kinds of things that haunt me.

So I sit with that prayer quietly, like holding something fragile in my hands.

Please let them stay light. Please let the world be kinder to them than it was to me.

Somewhere in between all my healing, I’m learning how to protect their light—even if I lost some of mine along the way.