Speak a word and I will hold it, Turn it over in calloused hands, Taste the grit between each vowel like dust clinging to boots from a war I haven’t quite left. I don’t need sermons or speeches Just a single syllable with weight. Something dense enough to remind me this fight isn’t over but I’m still in it. Not for glory. Not for vengeance. For the quiet contract made between fathers and their children To show up. To not disappear when it gets hard. To bleed if needed, but never to vanish. Give me a word and I will sharpen it until it becomes a blade I can wield against the dark between my ribs. The kind that creeps in after everyone’s gone to sleep. I will etch that word into memory, hold it in the small moments when she smiles, when I flinch, when I almost don’t pick up the phone but do anyway. A word can anchor. Can echo across valleys of self-doubt and silence. It doesn’t have to be profound. Just true. So speak it, whatever it is. I’m listening. I’ve always been listening. And I’m ready to turn your word into light.