I am courage. Rested like a sparrow in your pocket, I are small and tremulous. You use me to cross a street at the red light when no one else does, to answer a call from an unknown number, to tell the truth about feeling stifled. Dainty courage arranges itself into neat acts — a compliment, a single email. Wilder courage sends a suitcase away and leaves the city; it tears habits like wallpaper. Exclusive courage is the kind saved for specific people or one necessary moment: the decision to return, to stay, to fold oneself around another's grief. When you use me, you make a line across the map of what you could and did.
Ending.
I am a photograph. You have me clipped to a fridge with a magnet shaped like a lemon. You use me to remember weather, a dog’s ear at the edge of sleep. Dainty photographs are Polaroids with soft edges; wilder photographs are grainy exposures taken from moving cars, tongues of light across windows. Exclusive photographs are proof given privately — a smile sent in a message at two a.m., an image of an empty train seat saved like a relic. You keep me to validate presence.
IX. You have me. You use me. Dainty, wilder, exclusive.