Who Holds You…

She was crying… hot tears falling fast as jumbled words tried to explain the reason… her little heart was simply overwhelmed and now overflowing…

I wrapped my arms around her, held her super close, my lips brushing her hair until she could smile again…

After a while of letting it rain, she looked up at me… “I feel better now after you holding me…”

I smiled with a chuckle and admitted that big, heavy things get lighter, smaller and sometimes even vanish when somebody holds you…

She snuggled in again and then looked back up at me with worry in her still tearful eyes, “Mama, when you’re crying, who holds you?”

I choked on her innocent words as they ripped open an old pathway in my heart, finding their way to a room I keep dark and closed… trying my best to forget it exists…

I hate that room… Its better left empty, yet it begs to be filled… I want it silent, yet it cries to be heard… I’d rather it gone, yet it remains… screaming for someone to come along, start a fire, sweep the cobwebs, hush my haunting fears, erase old memories, open the shutters to let light in… dust a book from the shelf and love every word they read…

Sometimes… the little girl I used to be… the one that believed in love… pushes past the heavy door to sit alone in the cold chair… waiting for someone that I know I won’t let in… I can’t…

I let her sit alone… whispered dreams that have now become silent ghosts, her only company…

Praying for someone to hold her, yet forever barring the door…

I’m thankful she sits there every now and then though… a small glimmer of hope illuminating the room… a faint belief that someday, someone will look deep enough to see the hesitant flame and find a whole new world that everyone else left untouched…

Until then, her silent tears will be the echo that reminds me…

“No one…” was my simple answer… “No one yet…”