Braver Than You Think

I found it in the yearbook—

page 127, a name I haven't seen in twenty years,

handwriting slanted, teenage, certain:

"You're braver than you think you are."

I was seventeen. I was not brave.

I was terrified of everything—

saying the wrong thing in class,

being looked at directly,

the weight of my own voice.

But she wrote it anyway,

this girl who moved away junior year,

who I barely knew,

who somehow understood

that I needed to hear it.

The ink is faded now.

The page warped at the corners.

But the words are still there,

still reaching across twenty years

to touch something in me

that was drowning.

I read it like a prayer.

Like a prophecy.

Like maybe she saw something

I couldn't see yet.

I carried that sentence through college,

through the first job I was sure I'd fail,

through the year I learned to speak.

I never thanked her.

Never wrote back.

Just took her words like a map

and tried to become them.

Now I'm holding the page,

reading her handwriting,

and I'm wondering if she knows

what those eight words cost her to write,

how much they saved me.

Probably not.

Probably she doesn't remember.

But I do.

I always will.