The words that arrived on time

I found the yearbook in a box—

the kind you pack away and forget,

the kind that holds your past,

sealed and taped and set.

I opened it randomly,

looking for something to mock,

an embarrassing photo,

a terrible style,

some evidence that once

I was someone else, locked

in a body I didn't recognize,

a face I didn't want.

I was falling apart,

I was thinking things

I shouldn't think,

convinced I was fundamentally

wrong, a haunted want

for something I couldn't name.

And then in the back pages,

in ballpoint pen,

in the margin:

"You are braver than you know."

I'd forgotten it completely,

forgotten that someone

had seen me, had decided

it mattered, had written it down

in a yearbook they knew I might

open years later, in an attic, in a box,

at the exact moment

I needed to hear

that I was brave.

I don't remember who wrote it.

The handwriting means nothing now.

But it means something,

means I was seen,

means someone looked at me

and decided to tell me

I was more than

what I believed,

more than what

the voice in my head

was saying.

One sentence.

Ballpoint pen.

A yearbook.

And I'm still here,

still braver than I knew,

because someone

told me so.