One of the Permanent Stars

Do not surrender your light

to those who have mistaken dimness

for peace.

There are people

who will approach your dreams

with measuring tools too small

to comprehend their scale.

They will cup your horizon

in the palm of their fear

and insist

that the sky ends there.

They will call caution wisdom.

They will call limitation love.

They will offer you

the circumference

of their fear

and ask you

to mistake its edge

for the end of the world.

Decline.

Your life was not written

to fit within the margins

of another person's certainty.

The life that calls to you

will not arrive

in a straight line.

It will turn like a river

learning the shape of stone.

It will vanish into weather.

It will ask more of you

than you knew you could give.

Continue.

When others cast doubt

like handfuls of ash

across your path,

gather it.

Feed it to your fire.

When they close their doors,

understand:

some thresholds exist

so you will build

your own place of arrival.

Move with the steady certainty

of someone

who no longer asks

for permission

to become

the shape

your life requires.

And when you finally stand

where they were certain

you would never arrive,

you will see

that every dismissal,

every withheld blessing,

every attempt

to reduce your reach

was only the wind

teaching your flame

to rise so high

it entered the night

and became

one of its permanent stars.