Between Your First Line and My Last

There was a distance

between your first line

and my last—

a distance measured

not in miles,

but in memories.

You wrote,

“I am afraid of tomorrow.”

I answered,

“Then let me walk beside you.”

You wrote about storms,

I wrote about shelter.

You wrote about wounds,

I wrote about healing.

You wrote about leaving,

I wrote about waiting.

And somewhere

between your unfinished metaphors

and my desperate rhymes,

we became a poem

neither of us had planned.

Maybe you never intended

to give me the ending.

Maybe you simply needed

someone to continue.

And I did.

Not because I knew

how the story should end—

but because your first line

deserved an answer.