In The Time Between Sunrises

From The Muse Jar: On loving someone so much you ache with them

May 25, 2026

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I watch you move through the world
like someone carrying water
in cupped hands

so careful

as if one wrong step
might spill everything
you have spent your whole life
trying not to lose

I think about them sometimes
the younger you
and my heart turns animal with grief

the you who did not know
how much they would have
to live through
to become the person
sitting beside me now

I think about their little hope

how you must have stood there
with a basket
waiting at the edge of the woods
for someone kind to come down the path

I wish I could go back
to the place
where you learned
to be quiet

I would not to knock
not to ask politely

I would come in
with muddy boots
and turn every light on
search under every table

I would find the younger you
wherever they were hiding

and I would say
come here
      sweetheart
            nothing bad will happen now

but I cannot save who you were
before the world got to you

there is no path through the woods
that leads to then
no breadcrumb trail or white horse
no kind old woman with a spell for undoing

I think being you must hurt

not because there is anything wrong
with the shape of you

no
      never that

but because the world
has taught you 
that you must brace for the storm
even in the sunlight

because tenderness reaches for you
and you recoil
before you know you are flinching

because joy comes near
and you look for the cost

you say
it’s fine

and I hear
I have survived worse

you say
don’t worry about me

And I hear
I have never known 
      how to be cared for
            how to be a burden

                  without being punished for it

oh love
taking care of you has not once
been a burden or a pain or a hassle

I want to take your face
in my hands
and say

you do not have to earn
      the softness

you do not have to explain
      why you are tired

you do not have to be scared
      anymore

and I hate
that no kindness came your way
when you needed it most

I hate it in a way
that makes my love
feel clumsy and enormous

because what can I do with all this tenderness
except bring it to the person who made it out?

what can I do 
except kiss your hands when they shake

except tell you again and again
that none of it made you less lovable

I love you so much
just as you are

I will not ask you
to become some brighter
unharmed thing
just because 
it would hurt me less to watch

there is a freer version of you
I sometimes see radiating through
like sunlight slipping under a locked a door

and I want that for you

not instead of you
for you

but in the time between sunrises
I have and always will love you

I hope you know you do not
have to hide your suffering from me
I will gladly sit in the rain with you
so you were not alone

I will walk through the fire with you
without water or a plan
just so you can look beside you
and find someone
still reaching for your hand

I will sit beside the guarded gate
and not rattle it

I will bring my small lantern
I will tell the dark
it does not scare me

and maybe one day
you will believe
that nothing bad happens

maybe one day
you will set the armour down

and maybe not

but I hope that one day
you will look at yourself
with the same mercy
I have been trying
to hand you

until then
I love you as you are

be difficult if you must
be afraid if you must
be quiet
be strange
be unfinished

I am not here
for the version of you
the world did not wound

I am here
for the one who made it

and even when I worry for you
and hurt for you
I love you

this you

the careful miracle
the guarded garden
the holy stubborn heart

I love you here

and if you never become
less haunted
I will not love you less

I will simply keep
lighting the fire
keep setting the table

keep saying
come in
      sweetheart
            nothing bad will happen here.

you will never again ache alone

the world needs you

I love you so badly it hurts

I need you so badly
it becomes hope.

This poem’s prompt comes from Sean Mooney. The prompt was about loving someone so deeply you can see the pain behind how they act in life.

The love in the prompt is not “I wish you were different because you are not enough,” but “I wish the world had been gentler to you, so you did not have to act this way.” Whether that be careful, or guarded, or anxious. It is not about wanting to change a person, but loving them so much you hurt when they hurt, and wanting to be a shelter of sorts to them.

This post was inspired by a prompt provided to The Muse Jar, a project where people submit something —a word, memory, smell, anything—and I randomly pick some to write a poem about.

I am hoping to write a poem a day for the month of June to keep the whimsy alive through my classes, and hopefully to help me pay off some of the tuition. Thank you!

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