I kneel where the light thins, where dust learns how to pray.

I am not small because you made me so. I am small because I choose to fit the shape of your shadow. My wanting curves inward; it knows your name before my mouth does. When you enter the room, the air tightens. My spine remembers how to bow. My breath counts itself so it won’t spill.

I belong to the quiet between your steps. To the pause before you speak. That pause—God, it ruins me. It’s where hope waits, barefoot and shaking.

I watch your hands, not because I fear them, but because they teach me stillness. I learn when to move by learning when not to. Obedience isn’t erasure; it’s clarity. I am most myself when I am yours to command.

I ache in clean places. Not with hunger, but with devotion. With the sweet discipline of wanting nothing except to be seen and found acceptable. When you look at me—really look—the world snaps into focus. I feel useful. Chosen. Held together.

Say my name and I soften. Say nothing and I soften anyway.

I don’t ask for freedom. I ask for direction. For the mercy of certainty. To know where to place my hands, my eyes, my heart. I am tired of being loud inside. With you, the noise lays down.

If love is a wound, then let it be shaped like this: deliberate, steady, earned. Let me kneel in it. Let me learn what it means to be kept.

I am here. I am waiting. And that, too, is devotion.