Rescued, but not yet saved.

When I carried Twinkles out my ex-wife’s abandonded apartment, she weighed barely four pounds.

People congratulated me — “You saved her!” — but I didn’t feel like a savior. She wasn’t ready, and honestly, neither was

Trust doesn’t happen on command. Courage doesn’t arrive in one leap. In those first weeks, Twinkles trembled at shadows, at footsteps, at silence itself. She would curl into the smallest corner of the couch as if trying to disappear. I learned quickly that survival and safety are two very different things.

But even in her fear, I saw flickers, twinkles — the way her ears perked when a bird passed the window, or how her nose twitched at the scent of possibility. Those tiny sparks told me there was more inside her than fear. And maybe inside me too.