The Leap

For the longest time, trust had been a wound in them. An open sore that festered, scabbed, tearing open again and again at the slightest touch. It had been given once, eagerly, naively, with open hands and an unguarded heart. Each time it had been taken. Like pennies slipping through frayed pocket. A love wasted on those who took and never gave. Until they learned that love could not, would not be safe. People could not, would not be safe. Trust could not, would not be safe.

So they stopped.

They loved carefully, in measured doses, with escape routes always in sight. They let people just close enough to keep the loneliness at bay but never enough to leave themselves vulnerable. They mastered the art of half-truths and polite distance. Of nodding when they should have spoken. Of laughing when they should have cried.

It was easier that way.

Cleaner.

Safer.

Then. There was her.

She didn’t arrive with grand declarations or overwhelming demands. She simply existed within reach. Moving like a quiet river, constant and unhurried. A soft presence at the edge of their world. Asking for nothing. Expecting nothing. She never pushed. Never tried to tear down the walls they had spent years fortifying.

She just waited.

She just… stayed.

How could someone be so patient? How could someone not take advantage? Not dig their fingers into the cracks and tear them open like everyone else?

They dropped hints of the damage, the fractures, the ugly, broken places inside them, waiting for her to recoil. She didn’t.

She just waited.

How could someone be like this? How could she not want to pry them open, not to sink her hands into their past and carve out all the broken, ugly pieces? How could she not see where trust would lead?

She just… stayed.

She stayed when they pushed. She stayed when they went silent. She stayed when they were sharp and defensive and cold. She was simply there, holding open the door, letting them decide whether or not to walk through.

Love had always been an obligation. A contract with fine print they had failed to read. It came with strings – be this, give that, prove yourself.

And yet, she stood here, offering something without cost, without expectation, without a cage to lock them in. To be on the edge of something vast, something terrifying.

A choice.

To hope–

knowing hope had betrayed them before.

To love–

knowing it might not last.

To trust–

knowing they might fall.

The walls had been built so carefully. Brick by brick. Over years of pain and self-preservation. She had never asked them to be torn down. She had only ever waited, patient as the tide, steady as the sky.

With trembling hands, they took the first brick and laid it down.

It was terrifying. It was exhilarating.

Trust meant falling.

They didn’t know if they could survive another fall.

As her fingers curled around theirs, firm but gentle, something cracked inside them. Not in a way that broke, but in a way that let light seep through.

For the first time in longer than they could remember, they weren’t falling.

                                    They were

flying.