No Translation Needed

for my dearest friend

I met you on the hinge of change—

a breath before the break,

a heartbeat before the bloom.

My old skin still clung to me,

trembling with memory,

when your voice crossed oceans

to find me.

We hadn’t met,

but already,

you knew the map of me—

not the route others traced

in shadow,

but the one I dared to name

in silence.

You read me like a native tongue.

No translation,

no hesitation.

Only fluency in truth.

When we walked New York together,

you didn’t just show me the streets—

A glass of wine lost its bitterness.

A song cracked open.

A beer stopped being a burden.

You teased me about boys

and sat front row as I remembered

how to sing.

You were there

the day I stepped into a bikini—

not just to witness

but to celebrate.

To joke,

to dance,

to dare me,

to make me feel beautiful.

You saw the girl I had buried

under caution,

and you called her forward

gently,

as if she’d been your friend

all along.

What do you call the person

who holds the mirror

when you’re too afraid to look?

Who listens to the confessions

you’ve barely whispered to yourself?

Who stays

when the story gets heavy?

You called it friendship.

I call it a kind of grace.

You asked for nothing—

but gave everything.

You didn’t rush my healing.

You didn’t flinch from the ache.

And though we come

from different countries,

different words,

different wounds,

you feel like someone

I’ve always known—

not in this life, maybe,

but in the place

where time forgets to divide us.

You are the proof

that the universe is not random.

That there are souls

meant to find each other

just before the fall,

just before the bloom.

It has been less than a year—

and yet

you feel like a memory

etched into my bones.

A brother,

a mirror,

a lighthouse

that did not ask me to be brave—

only to arrive.

You did not save me.

You didn’t need to.

You simply stood close enough

for me to remember

I was never lost.

This is not a thank-you.

It’s an invocation.

A recognition.

A vow.

That no matter where we go—

no matter what skins we shed,

what cities change shape,

what silences fall between us—

you will always be

the one who understood

without needing a single word.