Constellations on Her Ceiling

I watched a woman recite her poem today, her voice calm but carved out of pain. The kind of calm that doesn’t come naturally but is hammered into you after years of breaking. Her steadiness was not grace; it was survival, a posture she had been forced to learn to keep from collapsing under the weight of everything that tried to break her. She said, “I have nothing left but to protect the little girl in me. To stand in front of her to make sure no one ever gets to her, to keep her safe.” And I felt that sentence wrap itself around my ribs like barbed wire, each word sinking in sharp, leaving me breathless. Because I knew exactly what she meant… the relentless watchfulness, the way you learn to stand guard at the doorway of your own soul, armor pressed tight against skin, refusing to let anyone close enough to bruise what has already been shattered.

Because I, too, have had to stand guard, planting myself like a shield in front of the small, stubborn girl inside me who still refuses to lower her hand. The little girl who waits with aching persistence to be chosen, to be held, to be loved in a way that does not renegotiate itself out of the room. Every tremor of the world rattles through her fragile frame, but I stay rooted, breathing through the ache. I become a living barricade against the fractures the world would press into her. Her eyes, wide and searching for constellations scattered across the ceiling of her quiet sanctuary.

So I learn to map them with her. I press my finger into the soft plaster of her ceiling and draw the quiet routes between her scattered stars. I stay, even when she begs me to walk away, because she feels no one should see her broken pieces. I name each flicker: this is a hope, this one a poem, this one the unfinished promise you keep whispering into your pillow. We stitch constellations out of what was nearly lost, connecting fragments with vows so loud the dark has no room to settle. In the mapping, her searching becomes a home… and I keep my hands there, steady as a compass, until she finally knows the pattern of her own light.

My therapist told me to name her as if she were another person, to set a plate for her at the table and speak as if I were answering a child’s knock. So, I do the only thing I know how to do: I write to her. I made her a home and turned all my promises into actions. I separate her from myself in my mind so I can finally look at her without collapsing. I write letters like offerings, ink folding into the seams of old hurts, tuck vows under her pillow like warm pennies, and practice saying soft truths until they feel like vows to her: you are seen, you are not a mistake, you are never too much for the people meant to witness you. I sit across from her there on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, the room between us small and holy. I watch her eyes trace the constellations scattered across her ceiling, lingering on each flicker as if they might point her to something she’s always been seeking, and I listen to the tiny, lyrical tremor in her voice, the soft quiver of hope and fear entwined. This time, I speak with a steadiness that will not crack, my words stretching across the space between us like a bridge made of light, guiding her back to the comfort she’s always deserved: You’re safe with me. I will not leave you alone in this silence. I will not smooth you down until you disappear. I will hold your mess and your sunshine, your loud poems and your secret silences, and I will be the harbor that refuses to turn into a desert the moment a storm comes. I will stay. Even if no one else ever does, I will.

I admire the way she counts her breaths when the room tilts, the way her brain rushes to find ways to remain in the current moment. I practice staying with her. I practice listening until silence becomes less terrifying than it used to be. I sit cross-legged on the floor with the lamp low, a circle of light like a stage just for her. She reads the poems she’s scratched into the margins of scraps of paper, each line a small comet thrown into the dark. Her voice cracks with a delicious, theatrical bravado, every word a flourish, every gesture a performance of her art, as if the universe itself might actually pause to listen. Her hands trace the air, sculpting each movement as if she could sew meaning into every word, stitching her thoughts and emotions into something tangible that the world might finally see. I clap until my palms sting, louder than any polite crowd could, louder than the hollow void that once trained her to perform into empty air. I beg her for one more verse, then another, until silence becomes a foreign concept, and the echo that used to haunt the end of her performance is replaced by the steady, insistent heartbeat of my presence: you are heard. I will love you so ferociously you will never again confuse attention for worth, or absence for truth.

When the world bares its teeth and the seats around us are empty, I step forward and become her barricade. I turn my chest into a lighthouse, round and immovable, so her eyes can find me when the night wants to convince her she is invisible. I will keep her gaze fixed on mine, not to blind her to who isn’t there but to teach her how to trust the presence that is. I will take every cut meant for her, every small erasure, every slow forgetting, and hold it like a stone in my palm until it loses the power to bruise. She will only see me, standing tall, relentless, and warm. Maybe, finally, that will be enough… that the small girl inside me learns the simplest impossible thing, that she was always worth staying for.

And so, to you, my little one… the girl who still trembles at shadows and whispers to empty rooms: I see you. I hear the cadence of your whispered sorrows and the outrageous, ridiculous way you still hope. I promise to be your armor and your harbor. I promise to listen with a patience that swallows silence whole, even when your voice quivers or curls into itself, even when your words feel too small to matter. I will hold you when your chest is a fist of fear. I promise to cradle you when you feel lost, to press my presence into the hollows the world tried to carve into you, and to remind you that you are never alone… not now, not ever again. I will love you in every way the world forgot how: loudly, fiercely, endlessly, with hands that hold instead of push away. You will not have to earn my love, shrink yourself, or perform ever again to prove your worth. I will remind you, over and over, that you were never the problem for wanting to be held on to. You do not have to prove your worth with quieter breath or smaller needs. You are not a thing to be fixed or an audience to be won. You are my child, and I will stand in front of you like the sun stands before dawn… relentless, warming, impossible to ignore. I am not leaving. I am here, immovable with a flame that refuses to flicker out.

I am you. And when you trace the constellations in your ceiling late at night, remember they are ours… each star a vow I whispered to keep you safe, each comet a fragment of love that will never fade.