I Am Love

There is a stillness that comes
when the spine of the soul straightens;
purpose settles in like breath,
alignment hums beneath the skin.
Not loud.
Not urgent.
Just right.
In that silence, I feel held
as though the unseen has learned my name,
as though the dark itself
has been instructed to keep me safe.
Once, I thought the gem always knew its worth
I was wrong.
It had to roll...

through dust that dulled its edges,
through mud that clung and whispered 'less'
Friction led it to the abode of light.
Rock-bottom was not the end
It was the base that let me stand still long enough
to notice the weight of my own life,
the miracle of breath returning
after it had almost forgotten me.
The greatest dream I carried shattered loudly—
glass in the chest
echoes of 'what could have been'.
I mourned it like death,
not knowing it was a doorway.
Because beyond the ruins
waited a dream with wider arms,
one that did not ask me to disappear to belong.
Destiny does not shout.
It reroutes.
Now I shine—not because I escaped the dirt,
but because I survived it.
Now I trust the fall—
for only after losing the ground
did I learn how high I was meant to rise.

When Illusions Fade

The ladder I climbed for years

turned out to lean on a crumbling wall;

every rung a quiet bargain

paid in compromise and pain.

I stepped away...

before the wall succumbed to gravity.

Now I live in a house built of borrowed strength 

my parents’ hands still warm

in the corners of unopened boxes,

their faith folded between kitchen plates.

The new work is smaller than my hunger once was,

but it arrives each morning like bread —

plain, sufficient, undeservedly kind.

Love, meanwhile, dissolved like ink in rain.

I had always known the letters were wrong,

but I kept reading...

hoping meaning would rearrange itself.

It never did.

My body has begun speaking in accidents —

an angry staircase breaking my ankle,

the road rising to make me fall,

the sky tilting when I move ahead alone.

Still...

somewhere beneath the bruises,

a stubborn pulse continues its rehearsal.

Winter keeps misplacing me,

yet I notice...

the trees are already swaying

ready to embrace the joy of spring.