You can enter someone’s heart
through your own
words—

just telling,
telling, telling
yourself

to them. An alchemy
of sorrow: yours becomes theirs,
and theirs is confessed.

Afraid that having grown
with sorrow, they have not
grown up

out of the darkness
blanketing their heart,
they make a tent

with it, and you
just lift the edge,
saying,

“If your blanket is big,
we can share. Or here,
take mine.”