AGATHOS (COMPLETED)

Every time our eyes met, it felt like joy itself recognized me-as if something sweet and familiar had been waiting just beneath the surface of ordinary days. The world was coming undone around me, losing shape, losing sense, and then you arrived-not as a solution, but as something given, something sacred, to make up for everything that never made sense.

I don't know how to live forward without you-not well, not truthfully. I'm just one of your ordinary children, a strand in the thread of this wild, beautiful family, but if you're not woven in, I don't think the rest of the tapestry matters.

I can't imagine a world for Kinsle where your voice doesn't rise somewhere in the wind, guiding, grounding, reminding us how to belong. I've never done well with change, with discomfort, with the unfamiliar-I've been enduring what everyone calls the "normal stuff," and none of it feels normal if you're not there.

Who could ever be more than you? Who could ever outshine you?

I never asked for much in this life-never longed for things, never chased material gold-pero mukhang hindi ko yata kaya na mawala ka sa akin.

I don't think I could bear it. And yet, that's what people say. When they hold something so precious, their soul aches-they always say, "Hindi ko kakayanin kung mawawala ka." "Hindi ko kaya mamuhay ng wala ka." I say it too, but what makes me different?

What would it take for this ache to be more than just another echo?

Maybe it starts here-with trembling, with truth, with admitting that I've heard the words "Do not be afraid" more times than I can count, and still, I am. No one ever said that faith sometimes stutters. And that, too... might be holy.