I have returned home in the early morning, knowing bravery for the first time, knowing it anew, and knowing it only now that I have bid it goodnight and become overwhelmed by its absence. Strength is quiet, sometimes silent and sometimes beating the soft, steady drum of life marching onward, not from or to anything but as a force in itself, unrelenting, relent though it may. I relent now, myself, to a hard, fast sleep, but, tired as I might be, I have been overcome first by an awing respect. Respect that leaves me a gaping innocent, young in the world. Respect whose only testimony, at this late early hour, is the new kind of faith I now keep.
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