How We Stay by Nma Dhahir

There are days when kindness is not a feeling
but a decision made quietly, like leaving a light on
in a room no one thanks you for entering.

        The world keeps moving through us, unfinished,
         asking more than it explains.
   
          We learn restraint from what survives without display:
          the hand that loosens before it clenches,
     the voice that waits long enough to hear itself soften,
  the moment when power chooses not to announce its name.

  Nothing here is dramatic. That is the point.

This is how we stay human together:
by refusing the easy damage, by carrying each other
without calling it sacrifice,
by believing that what we protect in one another
eventually protects the world.