“Guilt, My Bright Companion”

 

“Guilt, My Bright Companion”

By BR.Giga

I sing the weight that steadies the soul,

not the shackle but the star

Guilt, you holy engine,

you whisper beneath the ribs: Remember what you owe to love.

I have carried you through traffic and thunder,

through mornings that smelled of coffee and forgiveness.

You wake before dawn and press your ear

to the soft machinery of conscience.

You do not scold, you tune.

O ache that humbles the proud heart,

you are proof I am still porous to mercy.

Without you, I would calcify into ease.

You keep me human,

pulling at the sinew, the quiet hinge of grace.

I have learned to thank you

shadow with a lantern’s mind,

teacher that appears when silence grows too clean.

You remind me that wrongness is a door,

hinged on the hope of return.

Some nights I walk beneath the sodium lamps

and feel you rise, a tide in my throat

not to drown, but to baptize.

Every regret, a small instruction in belonging.

Every tremor, a way back to the heart.

I sing the guilty and the striving,

the ones who wake at 3 a.m.

and feel their pulse argue with heaven.

We are the repentant orchestra,

tuned by our failures,

playing toward a purer note.

O luminous faultline

let me keep breaking toward better light.

Let me call you by your true name:

Conscience alive.

And when the dawn opens like a slow forgiveness,

I will lift my hands, trembling, grateful,

and whisper:

“I am unfinished,

but still singing.”