The Griffin Watched Us Both

This poem is for anyone who's felt swept up by forces bigger than themselves, only to realise the real magic was the soft voice beside them saying, “You can choose.”

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Fantasy does not knock, it carves its entrance with runes too ancient to question,

opens a portal spun from longing and illusion,

and calls itself destiny while wearing the mask of wonder.

It crowned me with enchantment I never asked for,

filled my breath with the burn of stars and the hush of forgotten prophecies,

whispered that I was chosen, and I believed it,

because who doesn’t want to matter in a world built of myth and meaning?

But even tyrants can be beautiful, and this one gave me you,

your hand steady against the feathered tremble of the griffin,

your eyes holding a kind of magic I had never seen in any spellbook,

a soft, unspoken tether that never pulled, only waited.

While the world raged with fire and light and legends carved in stone,

you remained, not as prize or prophecy, but presence,

quiet and whole and asking nothing from the blaze that tried to take me.

And I knew then what no enchantment could teach,

that the fiercest kind of love is the one that lets you choose,

and that even beneath tyranny,

there can be peace if someone waits beside you without needing to win.