Dale Lloyd

I know what it is to walk alone,
my heart grown cold, like winter stone.
Hope deferred too many times—
dreams ground fine to choking dust.
I watched my passions lose their heat,
bright iron redden, flake, and rust.

The fire that once outpaced my fear
is now a wick that smokes and sighs.
Old longings—once a lifting wind—
lie snapped like twigs beneath my stride.

The cost of love, the cost of hope—
dare I believe again?
Perhaps it’s wiser to withdraw,
to guard my heart from further pain.
For every time I dare to trust,
betrayal waits its turn—
just one more chapter in this tale
of lessons hard and bridges burned.

So I shut the door and turn the key,
choose the dark that answers me.
I make a shelter out of night,
mistake my hiding place for might.

But night cannot hold back the dawn.
Morning comes. My vows are gone.
The promises I swore in ash
prove weightless—thin as breath that cannot last.

Still, love keeps finding me where I am.
It circles walls I thought secure.
And somehow cracks begin to show
in all the things I built to endure.

The fear-made stones fall one by one.
My guarded heart remembers flight.
And slowly—without argument—
I learn to step back into light.

I choose to love. Not from my strength.
Not because the past feels kind.
But because before I ever turned,
His love was already mine.

With this awakening, I am free—
free to love, because His love had first found me.