When the Morning Arrives Softly

Notes From the Hollow Bone | Entry Thirty-six

There is a version of me that only lives in the early light —
before the coffee,
before the world begins its movement,
before my mind remembers there are lists and clocks.

She is quiet.
She is honest.
She is unarmored.

And in that stillness, I remember —
nothing is demanding me anymore.
Not in the way it used to.

Because I no longer bow to urgency.
I no longer chase what is already meant for me.
And peace — I’m learning — doesn’t run.
It settles.
It waits.
It arrives gently and expects nothing in return.

Sometimes I think God speaks loudest in the softest places —
a pale sky,
a slow morning,
the way the day opens like water rippling from a pebble’s touch.

And what I hear isn’t instruction.
It isn’t direction.
It isn’t even a whisper.

It is simply this:

Be still with yourself.
Be patient with your becoming.
Everything is flowing as it should.

So I sit here — not chasing light,
not reaching for the next version of me,
not proving, fixing, or performing.

Just being.

And I’m finding that simply being here 

— with Him 

— is enough.

With Grace & Ink,
— Mai

When You Find Your People

Notes From the Hollow Bone | Entry Thirty-five

Some unions aren’t built by bloodlines —
they’re woven by God.

You wander for years thinking you’re “too much,”
too bright, too loud, too deeply feeling —
until one day you walk into a room
and realize you’ve simply been speaking
the wrong language your whole life.

And here —
here, among souls who burn the same way,
you are not asked to shrink.

Laughter isn’t measured.
Tears aren’t judged.
Prayer is breath.
And being fully yourself
isn’t dramatic, or excessive,
or inconvenient—

it’s welcome.
It’s understood.

It’s home.

This isn’t replacing blood —
it’s expanding love.

Because sometimes God sends a village
that doesn’t look like where you came from,
but looks exactly like
where you were always meant to belong.

And when you meet them,
there is no performance,
no proving,
no earning.

Just recognition.

Just
finally.

With Grace & Ink,
— Mai

If God Penned in Sunlight

 Notes From the Hollow Bone | Entry Thirty-four

 If God penned letters in sunlight,
this one would arrive the way dawn does—
quiet at first, slipping between the ribs of the world
without asking permission,
carrying a warmth that knows exactly
where you’ve grown quiet.

The letter would read…

 Look here.
Even the ghost forest radiates
when seen at the right angle.
You call these branches bare,
but I call them honest—
nothing extra, nothing pretending,
nothing performing a season
that isn’t meant for them.

 You think you’ve lost your way
because everything feels transparent now—
but transparency is not emptiness.

 It is clarity.
It is readiness.
It is the place where even muted light
finally knows where to land.

 You don’t have to grip this moment
as if it might crumble.
It won’t.

 What is meant for you has never depended on your force—
only your openness.

 And then the sunlight would soften
into that amber seam between day and night,
resting itself on the edges of every branch,
as if underlining its last line…

 You are not meant to know your destination
before you begin.
Only to trust the One
who keeps writing your story
in colors you haven’t learned to name.

 And in the hush that follows, you would feel it—
that subtle, reverent tug
toward whatever is next.
Not a command.
Not a warning.
A presence. A promise.

 A letter from God written in light
on the bones of a forest
that refuses to fear winter—
a reminder that you, too,
can let the sun tell you
where to stand next.

 — With Grace & Ink,
Mai

The Light Behind The Ghost Forest

Notes From the Hollow Bone | Entry thirty-three

Lately I’ve been standing inside a kind of holy uncertainty — a tender stretch of life where nothing is settled, yet everything is speaking. The quiet mornings, the shifting skies, the soft ache of not knowing where my next footing will land — all of it feels like its own kind of prayer.

This poem rose from that space.
From the part of me learning to listen again.
From the part of me remembering that home isn’t a destination at all —
it’s wherever I stand, breathe, and look up at the sky.

The Light Behind The Ghost Forest

The light teaches the branches
what humans always forget —
that all will be well.

Not because life bends to our urgency,
or because we’ve earned the right
to shape the seasons,
but because the world knows
how to return to itself
without needing our permission.

The bare trees don’t argue
with the quiet of their own becoming.
They do not fear the leaves they’ve lost,
nor grasp for the ones not yet grown.
They simply stand,
rooted in a wisdom older than memory —
that what is meant to come back
will find its way in time.

Meanwhile, we —
with our tender, racing minds —
cling to every what-if
as if the horizon were ours to manage,
as if a single sunset required
our supervision to arrive.

But the light keeps trying:
slipping through the branches,
gliding across the bones of winterwood,
whispering its gold reassurance
to anyone soft enough to listen —

You do not have to force your becoming.
You do not have to outrun your fear.
You only need to stand your ground,
open to what is already on its way.

For resilience is not born
from strength alone —
but from patience,
from trust,
from surrender,
from the quiet willingness
to believe that life is not against you,
even when it is silent.

And so the light teaches,
again and again,
the lesson we forget most easily:

all will be well,
even before you understand how.

— With Grace & Ink,
Mai

The Cusp of Unknown

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry thirty-two 

Today feels like standing at a threshold I didn’t plan for but somehow needed.
I’ve left the quiet edges of farm life—those soft, patient mornings that held me—
and now I’m in motion again, carried by skies I don’t yet know
and roads that will take me farther before they settle under my feet.

There’s no map for this kind of shift,
only the trust that the next place will reveal itself
at the exact moment I’m meant to arrive.

And yet… gratitude rises.

Not because life is perfect (it isn’t).
Not because the future is clear (it’s not).
But because there is something sacred
in realizing I am still capable
of being present
even in uncertainty.

I am thankful that I can soften instead of fear,
that I can stay humble in the unraveling,
that I can choose kindness while life rearranges itself around me.
I am thankful for the breath that anchors,
the faith that lifts,
and the quiet whisper that says —
You are exactly where you need to be,
even if you don’t yet know why.

The Cusp of Unknown

Between the leaving and the stay,
the heart relearns its sacred way.
And still the dawn, in gentle tone,
reminds me I’m not walking alone.

Though shadows blur the steps I take,
my faith remembers what won’t break.
For every path that shifts or bends,
the unseen mercy still attends.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The World Teaches Us to Earn Love — But the Soul Knows Better

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry thirty-one

There comes a moment in every life when the old teachings fall apart.
Not because they were loud, or cruel,
but because they were wrong.

 Most of us were raised — quietly, subtly, relentlessly —
to believe that love is something we win.
Something we earn.
Something given only when we behave well enough,
break small enough,
or shine bright enough to be chosen.

 We were taught, without words,
that love has conditions, thresholds,
exams we never quite pass.

 And so we grow into adults who perform.
Adults who carry childhood hunger into grown bodies.
Adults who chase the illusion that if we can become
soft enough,
strong enough,
beautiful enough,
forgiving enough,
quiet enough,
pleasing enough—

 then maybe love will stay.

 But there is a truth older than this world,
a truth that arrives only when we are finally tired
of performing our way into belonging.

 It is simple.
It is ancient.
And when it lands, it lands like revelation:

 Love is not earned.
It is given.
There is nothing you can do, or fail to do,
that makes you more or less worthy of it.

When my son said this to me — in the soft honesty of a struggle he did not deserve —
I felt something inside me break and glow at the same time.
A mother knows a child’s pain before he speaks it,
but this time, he named a truth I had searched for my whole life.

 He knew the only woman who had ever loved him fully, fiercely, without condition
was his mother.
Not because he earned it.
Not because he performed for it.
But because love — real love — is given in the marrow,
not negotiated in the mind.

 And as he spoke, I realized something I had never dared to admit:

 Every child deserves that kind of love in their lifetime —
not just from a parent,
but from a partner,
a companion,
a soul that says “your breath matters to me”
at dawn and at midnight.

 Not love that demands we erase ourselves.
Not love that thrives only in honeymoon glow.
Not love that punishes difference or silences truth.
Not love that folds under its own immaturity.

 But love that is whole enough to hold two perspectives.
Love that understands disagreement is not danger.
Love that recognizes one truth:
I can be fully myself,
you can be fully yourself,
and if our paths align,
we will walk them together without fear.

 This is the love I want for my son.
This is the love I want for all my children.
This is the love I want for every boy who was never told he was worthy,
and every girl who learned to shrink herself to be chosen.
For every grown child who still aches at night wondering if they are enough.

 So hear this —
whether you are my son by blood,
my son by spirit,
or a stranger who needed these words:

 You are worthy of a love that does not leave.
You are worthy of a love that does not ask you to earn it.
You are worthy of a love that sees you — all of you — and stays.

 One day, someone will love you with the same devotion
your mother wished the world had given you from the beginning.
A love that knows your edges,
holds your shadows,
honors your truth,
and walks beside you not because you are perfect—
but because you are theirs.

 And until that day arrives,
carry this with you like a vow:

 Love is not the prize.
You are.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The Vows I Made to the Wild

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry thirty

I didn’t marry the world all at once.
It happened slowly—
in the way soft things learn to trust again.

One morning I found myself keeping promises
I never said aloud:
to return to the oak that waited for me,
to ground my shaking bones in its shadow,
to lift my face toward the same sky
that had watched me grow and break
and grow again.

I made vows without a ceremony,
without witnesses,
without anything but the wind
whispering yes against my cheek.

I vowed to come back
even on the days I felt unworthy of belonging.
I vowed to look up
when the world felt too heavy to lift.
I vowed to read the language of branches
and not demand they speak mine.
I vowed to listen
even when what I heard was only my own breath
settling into stillness.

And to the storms—
I promised respect.
Not fear.
Not resistance.
Just the knowing that life
cannot be all sunlight,
and that breaking open
is sometimes the truest way to grow.

Somewhere between the rain and the roots,
the world took me as its own.
And I—
with a heart that had been half-forgotten,
half-overlooked—
finally said yes.

This marriage has no ring,
no aisle,
no applause—
just a quiet union between the world above me
and the world within me,
two steady halves
forever calling each other home.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The World Above Me, The World Within

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-nine

There are days when the sky feels like a mirror—not because it’s clear, but because it’s honest. Storm-heavy, unfinished, full of edges. And somehow, that’s the kind of beauty I understand best. I’ve always found myself drawn to the parts of the world that most people overlook— fallen branches, dried roots, forgotten corners of land. Not because they’re pretty in the traditional sense, but because they carry truth without pretending.

People call it “seeing beauty in the small things,” but it’s more than that. It’s recognizing the quiet ones. The misunderstood ones. The things that don’t shine on command but still hold a kind of steady, unshakable grace. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived long seasons as the overlooked one— misread, underestimated, or simply unseen or who I actually was.
Not in bitterness, but in that familiar ache of being deeper than people assumed, and softer than the world expected.

So yes— I notice the oddities, the anomalies, the almost-beautiful things the eye skips past.
Because they speak my language. Because they remind me that beauty does not need permission to exist. And because belonging, for some of us, has never been loud. It has always come quietly— in roots, in storms, in bare branches, and in every overlooked thing that keeps on holding its place in a world that barely notices.

Nothing is wasted.
Nothing is without story.
And sometimes, the most beautiful things
are the ones you have to learn how to see.

The World Above Me, The World Within Me

The branches know my secret name—
the one I only speak in storms.
They tilt toward me like they understand
the way a quiet heart transforms.

I’ve walked the world half-overlooked,
a soft thing in a world of noise,
the kind of beauty seldom seen,
the kind that shyly holds its poise.

But broken things still catch the light,
and almost-beautiful still gleams.
The world above me mirrors back
the hidden world beneath my seams.

And maybe that is why I look
for truth in all the tangled places—
in weathered bark, in crooked roots,
in every flaw the wild embraces.

For I belong to what is real,
to what grows honest, rough, and free—
the world above me, world within—
two halves returning home to me.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

She Heard Me Through the Clouds

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-eight

It had been raining for days, the sky a thick gray curtain that hid every star. I hadn’t seen her in what felt like forever, and I didn’t realize how much I missed her until I whispered it out loud — “Mother Moon, please, just a moment.”

Tonight, she answered. I caught her light through my window, just a sliver, and I ran outside into the mud and chill like a child seeing an old friend. For a few precious minutes, the clouds parted, and she looked right at me.

I don’t know why it moved me the way it did — maybe it was the reminder that I’m still seen, still heard, even in the quiet. Maybe it was peace finding its way back home.

She Heard Me Through the Clouds

It had been days

since her face found the night—

rain swallowed the stars,

veiling her light.

The sky forgot its shimmered song,

and I forgot to what I belonged.

I missed her —

not as one misses a season,

but as a soul aches

without reason.

Last night, I whispered into the dark,

not knowing the unknowns that be.

I love the rain, Mother Moon,

but ache when it hides you from me.

A random peek past my window sill,

her light reflecting from beyond the hill.

The clouds pulled back—

just for a breath of time.

And in all the world,

she saw me, and she was mine.

Shoes pressing into softened earth,

I met her gaze and felt rebirth.

Her light brushed over every doubt,

and in that glow, I breathed it out.

Not healed, not whole, but here again—

the kind of peace that has no end.

Still here.

Still seen.

Still part of it all.

And that was enough—

for me, at nightfall.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The Language of Wind

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-seven

There are nights when the wind feels alive — not just as air, but as presence. Last night was one of them. Out here in the quiet countryside, it moved through the trees like something ancient remembering its shape. The branches bent and swayed, making way for its passage — a choreography of grace and surrender. Shadows rippled, light shifted, and the whole landscape seemed to breathe with it.

It wasn’t just the trees that moved. It was as if the earth and sky were speaking in a language I had always known but never learned to name. There was a pull — both eerie and welcoming — like being invited into an old memory I didn’t know was mine.

This morning, the wind has stilled, but its lesson lingers. Becoming, I think, is not about changing. It’s about remembering what has always been speaking — the rhythm beneath the noise, the quiet truth inside the moving world.

The Language of Wind

Last night, the wind spoke in a language older than fear.
The trees bowed to listen.
Light slipped between their ribs,
and shadows rippled like breath across the earth.

Everything moved as one body—
a living symphony of grace and surrender.

And in that moment, I understood—
to become is not to change,
but to recognize what has always been speaking.

Spell of the First Wind

Before breath had a name or form,
the wind was the voice that shaped the storm.
It taught the trees the art of sway,
and whispered, all returns someday.
To stand and listen is to obey.

With Grace & Ink,
Mai

The Quiet Above

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-six

 The stars have known stillness since before there was breath to name it.
They watched the first fires burn, the first hearts beat,
and they never hurried.
They understand what I am just beginning to learn—
that stillness isn’t the absence of motion,
it’s the pulse between moments,
the inhale that holds the universe in suspension.

 When I stand beneath them, I feel both ancient and new.
I can almost hear the echo of all who’ve looked up before me,
those who wondered where we came from
and why the dark feels like home.
Their curiosity hums through me,
a thread of remembering that stretches across time.

 To be still is not to stop; it is to be in.
In breath, in sight, in sound, in the quiet dance of existence.
The stars already know this.
They’ve been teaching it forever—
not through answers,
but through their patience to simply be.

Spell for Stillness

By the stars’ slow-turning grace,
I learn the rhythm time won’t chase.
No voice, no rush, no call to climb—
just breath that folds itself in time.

Let questions fade like smoke set free;
what’s meant will drift back home to me.
The quiet hums, the night forgives,
and every stillness softly lives.

So may I rest where echoes start,
with open eyes and steady heart.
The stars remind what souls have known—
to be still is to come home.

 With Grace & Ink,
  Mai

Between Sky & Flame

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-five

If fire could speak, its words would say,
I burn to give the night its day.
My crack and hiss, my golden breath,
are life remade through holy death.

And from above, the sky would call,
I see your dance, I bless it all.
Your smoke ascends, your embers gleam,
and wake the stars within my dream.

Between the two, my spirit stands,
with ash and awe within my hands.
I am the bridge, the voice, the thread,
where earth is born and stars are fed.

For what is lost returns the same—
as sky remembers every flame.

With Grace & Ink,
Mai

Spell for the Falling Star

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-four

By chance or grace, the heavens spun,
and I caught a star while catching none.
No wish was made, no prayer was planned—
just light that slipped through mortal hands.

 The sky was laughing, wide and far,
reminding me how young we are.
To play, to pause, to look, to see—
the world still hums with mystery.

 So dance with dusk, let wonder start,
unclutter mind, unarmor heart.
For those who look, the night will show—
the stars still fall for those who know.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

A Spell for Cleansing Flame

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-three 

By flame and breath, by spark and ground,
let what was heavy be unbound.
Let roots release, let embers sing,
the ash will bless what fire brings.

 Old wood surrenders, weeds let go,
the blaze transforms what we outgrow.
The smoke ascends, the soil receives,
and from the dust, the earth believes.

 So dance, if you can, before the light—
move with the flame into the night.
Let stillness burn, let spirit mend,
for what fire takes, it gives again.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The Loop & The Spark

Notes from the Hollow Bone  |  entry twenty-two

It began as a small noticing: the clock reading 10:10 on the tenth day of the tenth month. Two ones, two zeros—creation and wholeness repeating, looping like breath. I didn’t take it as a sign to seek anything; I simply listened. What unfolded was a recognition that the life I once tried to build from longing is now growing from stillness. The poem that followed is a reminder of that shift—a kind of living spell for being whole, for creating from love rather than for it.

A Spell for Wholeness

By the silence that stayed
when the noise fell away,
I was reborn—
not from searching,
but from stillness.

What I once called longing
has softened into presence.
What I once called seeking
has become seeing.

I am not waiting for the light.
I am the light remembering itself.

The part of me that needed love
has become love—
breathing, pausing,
resting in its own reflection.

By zero and one,
by loop and spark,
I create from wholeness now.
Nothing missing.
Nothing lost.
Only returning.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

A Spell for Remembering

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry twenty-one

Tonight, I stood outside my camper, wrapped in quiet, with the moon suspended just above the trees. The night felt ancient — familiar in a way I couldn’t name. It wasn’t about beauty or even awe; it was something subtler. A hum beneath the stillness.

There’s a peace that comes only when the world goes quiet enough for you to hear your own breath matching the rhythm of the wind. That’s what I felt tonight — not revelation, not clarity, but connection.

The poem came through like a whisper, a spell really — not one to summon or change, but one to remember. The kind of remembering that happens deep in the spirit, when you realize illumination isn’t about light chasing darkness — it’s about learning to see in the dim.

Maybe that’s what this season is teaching me: that the universe speaks gently, that answers arrive as echoes, and that peace doesn’t always need to be found — sometimes it’s already sitting quietly beside you, waiting to be acknowledged.

🌙 A Spell for Remembering

Words for the listening night

By moonlight and motion,
by silence and sky,

may what was hidden
remember how to rise.

Let the shadows soften,
let the knowing begin,

may the light find its way—
not around you, but within.

Speak gently to the stillness,
let your spirit recall—

peace is not the answer,
it is the pulse beneath it all.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Dear Creator — The Quiet Shape of Peace

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry twenty

Dear Creator,

A friend told me I looked happy today.
I smiled, but what I felt wasn’t happiness—it was something quieter, deeper.
Contention, maybe. Or peace. The kind that doesn’t need proof or plan.

I’ve spent most of my life chasing ease—making things simpler, more efficient, more comfortable. I thought peace would be on the other side of all that effort. But it never was. The more I tried to control, the less I felt held.

Now, stripped of all the noise, I am starting again—by choice and by circumstance, but I choose to see it as by grand design. I am back at the beginning, learning the basics: how to move slower, how to listen longer, how to work with my hands again. Burning leaves, cutting branches, tending the land. Things I never did as a city girl. Things that don’t make life easier, but make it truer.

Out here, peace isn’t an achievement. It’s an arrival.
It’s the wind that stirs just when the heat becomes too much.
It’s the way the land seems to breathe with me.
It’s the silence that no longer feels empty, but full of conversation.

I am learning that simplicity is not lack—it is abundance without excess.
That the ground gives what it can when I stop asking for more.
That the world was never meant to be conquered or perfected; it was meant to be lived with.

 There is no schedule here, no clear next step, and strangely, no panic.
Just the pulse of something steady beneath my feet,
and the soft knowing that I am exactly where I need to be—
not because I earned it, but because I finally stopped running from it.

 Maybe this is peace, Creator—
not the one the world sells,
but the one the earth teaches.
The kind that doesn’t come when I fix everything,
but when I finally let everything simply be.

With Grace & Ink,
Mai

Dear Creator: The Tension of Being Human

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry nineteen

Dear Creator

I did not mean for this to become ritual.
But like breath,
like heartbeat,
it found me morning and night,
until gratitude became second nature.

At dawn, my words are an opening—
an invitation into the day.
At night, they are surrender—
a laying down of all I carried.
And in between,
you send reminders through quiet pauses,
through the nudge of angels,
to stop,
to notice,
to thank.

Yet even in this rhythm,
I am still so human.
Flawed.
Distracted.
Pulled by ego,
by the endless weight of emotion.
There are nights I forget.
Mornings when fear gets louder than faith.
Moments when my first thought
is not kindness,
but judgment,
defense,
or doubt.

But you see all of me.
You see the mess, the ache, the weakness—
and still,
you love me.

And it is that love,
constant, unflinching,
that draws me back to gratitude,
that teaches me humility,
that makes me want to be more
than the sum of my impulses.

You are my compass,
my anchor,
my breath.
And though I am not always faithful,
you are.

This is why I pray.
Why I whisper thanks in the car,
on unfamiliar roads,
in borrowed rooms,
in moments when I feel so small.

Because I know you are there,
and in you,
even as flawed and human as I am—
I am enough.

With Grace & Ink,
Mai

Dear Diary: The Road Teaches in Whispers

Notes from the Hollow Bone, entry eighteen.

I did not expect this trip to become a lesson.
It was just work, after all — a rescheduled trip, a road I hadn’t meant to take but did anyway. States blurred into one another — Missouri into Illinois, Illinois into Kentucky, and on into Tennessee. The roads stretched straight ahead, endless and quiet, the clouds above painted in strokes that only the sky knows how to make.

I should tell you the truth: I was afraid.
Driving long distances has always pressed against my nerves. Highways feel too open, bridges too high, new places too uncertain. Anxiety makes my palms sweat, my chest tighten, my thoughts race into every possible “what if.” Most times, I would rather stay home, safe in my own quiet.

But this time, I went anyway.

And something shifted.

Each day, I practiced presence like it was survival. I spoke out loud to myself, as if giving voice to the reminder would make it more real: Be here. Be now. Don’t rush ahead to tomorrow’s meeting, don’t count the days until home, don’t let fear swallow the view. Just breathe. Just drive. Just see.

There were moments that should have undone me. Bridges arching over wide rivers, for example. I could not tell you which ones — I was too busy holding the wheel steady, too busy feeling my fear rise. And yet, I did it. Not without shaking. Not without sweat. Not without fear whispering in my ear. But I did it.

And maybe that was the moment of clarity: freedom does not come when fear disappears. Freedom comes when fear rides beside you and you keep moving anyway.

I saw my people — my circle, my chosen family. I saw colleagues who remind me of the worth in what I do. Each encounter was a morsel of presence, something I could have missed if I had let my mind spin into the days ahead or the wish to be back home.

This was the first trip where I was not counting down the hours until retreat. Instead, I found myself awake to each day as it unfolded. It was different. It was necessary.

And in that difference, I felt alive.

The truth is, so much of my life has been shaped by avoidance. Hiding is easier. Fear feels safer than risk. But the road taught me something new: fear doesn’t vanish, and maybe it never will. Yet in the very act of stepping into it, of choosing not to retreat, a kind of quiet freedom begins to bloom.

This trip wasn’t about miles. It wasn’t about the states I crossed or the meetings I attended. It was about presence. About learning that what terrifies me can also free me. About discovering that I don’t need to control the road to move forward.

And maybe that’s what life is —
Not conquering fear,
not erasing it,
but breathing through it,
mile by mile,
day by day,
until freedom feels like a passenger too.

With Grace & Ink,
~Mai

Anatomy of Love | The Many Faces of Love: Part II

Notes from the Hollow Bone, entry seventeen

The Cost of Wonder

Love does not always arrive with ease.
It is not always soft or warm.
Sometimes it calls you out into the night—
away from comfort,
away from safety,
into the bite of small hungers
that take what they will.

And yet—
above, the sky waits.
A cathedral of dark,
a blanket of stars spread wide,
the kind of beauty that humbles
and consumes in the same breath.

Here is the paradox:
every face of love carries a cost.
Sometimes the cost is heartbreak.
Sometimes it is longing.
Sometimes it is simply the stinging of the night
against your skin,
a reminder that wonder is never free.

But you pay it.
Because to lift your eyes,
to be broken open by vastness,
to let yourself be undone—
this is the holy toll of love.

For love is not only found in fire,
nor in the ache of absence.
It is also in the sacrifice
of standing still,
of bearing the small wounds
that beauty requires.

And in this surrender,
you remember what it means
to be remade by wonder.

With Grace & Ink,
~Mai