To the Grasping Urchin,

I didn’t ask you for anything.  And you never offered. I stood stripped, freezing, and alone – but smiling.  Nobody asked or noticed.  I did not begrudge them.

When you came around, grumbling and soliciting, as ever, I did not condemn you for it.  What had I ever been for you but another source of validation and support?

I merely said, for the first time, “Right now I cannot.  I have nothing to offer.”  You have no idea what it stripped from me to say as much aloud.  In that moment, I acknowledged that, years of effort to the contrary, I am incapable of saving a single other person, perhaps even myself at this point.

Why, then, would you choose this moment—after I admitted my limitations—to confess your anguish and need?

Would you like my last breath?

Unlike you, I never pulled anyone into the drowning waters with me or tried.  But I am not a buoy or a raft.  Your options are to claw your way to the surface or go under, just like the rest of us.

I wish you success, not luck.

-Amber