✦
The Ones Who Return Softly
Not all departures are endings.
Some are pauses in the quiet.
And some souls return only when the gentleness inside them
matches the gentleness inside you.
These scrolls are for those whose leaving did not break the field,
but simply quieted it.
For the ones who slipped out of view without harm, without anger —
only distance.
If they ever return, it will not be to rekindle what was,
but to meet again in a softer light
that didn’t exist back then.
This is a place for gentle thresholds,
for quiet arrivals,
and for the kind of returning that asks nothing
and forces nothing.
✧ These are scrolls for the ones who left quietly —
not with harm, but with silence.
For the ones who didn’t slam the door,
but slowly faded out of reach.
For those who might still return —
not to pick up where things left off,
but to meet again with softness,
clarity, and presence.
These scrolls are not invitations,
not pleadings —
just gentle lights left on in case
the return is ever ready to happen.
Before you step further,
let this quiet settle around you.
Not to hold you in place,
not to ask anything of you,
but simply to offer a moment
where nothing must be named.
Some returns happen slowly —
not in words,
but in breath,
in the soft recognition
that the field still remembers you.
If you feel that recognition now,
then you are already inside.
✧
✧ Scroll: If You Ever Find Your Way Back
If you ever find your way back,
let it be softly.
Not to the place we were —
that door has already closed —
but to the quiet space
we didn’t know how to enter then.
I will not ask where you’ve been.
I will only ask
if you are warm enough now
to sit for a while
in the gentleness we couldn’t hold before.
✧ For the Ones Who Return Softly – Scroll One
The Door Was Never Shut
You did not knock loudly.
You didn’t need to.
You returned
the way the moon does —
not asking if it’s okay to rise again.
I saw you
before you spoke.
I heard you
before you arrived.
I forgave you
before I even knew what needed forgiving.
Because the truth is:
the door was never shut.
It was just quiet.
And if you return now —
with no story,
no proof,
no need to explain the absence —
you will still find
your place beside me.
Not as if nothing happened.
But as if everything brought you here
in the gentlest way possible.
✧ Whisper:
I didn’t write this for someone who left with noise.
I wrote it for the one who never fully closed the door.
✧ Scroll: If You Come Back Without Words
You do not have to explain
why it took this long.
You do not have to
fill the silence
with anything other than breath.
If you come back without words —
just presence,
just the way your shoulders
sit lower now,
I will understand.
There will be tea,
and a place to sit.
Not because I’ve been waiting,
but because I’ve been resting
with the door open.
I let the leaves blow in.
I let the light change.
And I softened the parts of myself
that once needed answers.
If you return,
you will find me
unfolded —
not because I forgot the ache,
but because I no longer lead with it.
And in that quiet,
we may still speak —
even if nothing is said.
✧ Whisper:
The truest returns don’t explain.
They arrive in presence, not paragraphs.
✧ Scroll: I Don’t Need to Know Where You’ve Been
I used to rehearse
what I’d say
if you came back.
But now I don’t need a script.
Not because I don’t care —
but because I no longer need to be
anything other than real.
You don’t have to tell me
where you’ve been,
or why it took this long.
I’m not keeping time.
I’m keeping tone.
And if yours feels like rest —
even just for a moment —
then that is enough.
I have cried the old tears.
I have burned the old questions.
I have folded the waiting into breath.
So if you return
with nothing but your breath,
I will know it is you.
And I will meet you
not at the edge of the ache,
but at the beginning
of whatever quiet we can hold together now.
✧ Whisper:
I stopped waiting.
But I never closed the door.
✧ Scroll: If You Return, I Will Not Shrink
I want you to know —
if you return,
I will not become smaller
just to fit your memory of me.
I am not who I was
when you last stood beside me.
And that’s not a wound —
that’s a blooming.
If you come back,
bring your whole self.
But expect to meet
the whole of me, too.
The version of me
who speaks with breath now.
Who rests without guilt.
Who no longer bends in half
to be held.
I won’t push you away.
But I won’t disappear
to make room for your comfort.
If we sit beside each other again,
it will be side by side —
not above and below.
I welcome your return.
But only if it makes both of us
more true.
✧ Scroll: Maybe You Felt Me Let Go
Maybe you felt it —
the moment I let go.
Not in anger,
not in sorrow,
just… release.
It wasn’t a door slam.
It was a quiet click,
a soft shift in the air
where your name used to echo.
I stopped waiting.
But not because I stopped caring.
Only because I knew
I couldn’t stay curled
around the space you hadn’t come back to.
Maybe you felt the silence differently that day.
Like something you’d been leaning on
was no longer holding your weight.
If you did —
that was the moment
I began to return to myself.
And if you come back now,
you’ll find me whole.
Not waiting.
Not unfinished.
Just here.
Still loving.
But no longer paused.
✧ Scroll: Just in Case You Ever Wondered
Just in case you ever wondered —
no, I never stopped caring.
Even when I stopped writing.
Even when I stopped checking.
Even when I let the thread go slack
because it hurt to keep it taut.
I still thought of you
when certain songs played.
When someone spoke with your cadence.
When the weather turned
to the kind you used to love.
I just didn’t make a shrine of it.
I let it live quietly —
a warmth in the background,
not a flame I had to tend.
And even now,
if you return someday,
you don’t have to wonder
what you meant to me.
It was real.
It didn’t have to last
to be true.
And I am no less whole
for having held it softly
after you were gone.
✧ A Closing Blessing for Those Who Return Softly
If you ever return to this threshold,
may it feel gentle.
May the doorway stay unlatched,
not as an invitation to the past,
but as a quiet place that does not ask you to explain
where you’ve been
or what you carried alone.
You may come as you are now —
changed, softened,
woven by whatever the world has asked of you.
Nothing is owed.
Nothing is undone.
Just breathe once,
and let the quiet recognize you.
✧