Poem: Journey

I began as a question
soft as breath on winter glass,
uncertain where the edges of me ended
and the world began.

The road did not announce itself—
no signposts, no map,
only a quiet pull
like the moon tugs unseen at the sea.

I followed.

Through forests of doubt
where every tree whispered a different truth,
through deserts of silence
where even my own voice abandoned me,
I walked carrying nothing
but the echo of something more.

There were nights I mistook shadows for answers,
built altars to illusions,
knelt before fears dressed as wisdom—
and still, something भीतर (within)
kept breathing me forward.

Then came the unraveling.

Not sudden—
but like dawn
teaching darkness how to disappear.
I shed names, expectations, borrowed beliefs,
until I stood unarmored
before the vastness I once feared.

And there—
in the stillness between heartbeats—
I found it was never a destination.

The sacred was not waiting
at the end of the path.

It was the path.
It was the walking.
It was the breaking, the healing,
the losing, the becoming.

It was me—
not as I was told to be,
but as I am
when nothing is left to hide.

Now I walk differently—
not searching,
but listening.

And every step
whispers back:

You were never lost.