Where Did You Go? (A Poem to Myself)
This past year I walked deep into the winter of myself — through a landscape charcoal-black and stripped of softness, beyond the dark wood where the light forgets its own name. Pain is a lonely country. I know its roads now, the way it narrows, the way it silences. But I have learned this too: that darkness is not always an ending. Sometimes it is simply the long way home, the path back to one's self.
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| Soul Searching |
Resurrection
There she is—beneath layers of practical shoes
and sensible thoughts, behind the closed door
of a room you've stopped entering—that wild-eyed girl
who believed midnight was a beginning, not an end.
Remember how she'd trace Orion's belt with her fingertip
against the window glass, how she'd whisper to stars
like they were confidants? How coffee tasted
like possibility at 3 a.m., bitter and perfect,
your pen racing across pages that couldn't contain
all the words spilling from your chest?
She's still there. In the flutter of your pulse
when autumn light breaks through clouds,
in the way your body still startles at the right touch,
remembering how to arch toward another's heat.
You haven't lost her—just misplaced her
underneath to-do lists and compromises,
beneath the weight of all those practical decisions
that accumulated like snow, one gentle layer at a time,
until the ground disappeared completely.
Look for her in forgotten corners:
in the spine of that dog-eared Neruda,
in the matchbook you kept from that night
when his eyes reflected candle flames,
in the way your fingers still drum restlessly
against your thigh when certain songs play.
She waits for you in the spaces between
what you've become and what you promised yourself.
She's there in your hesitation before saying no,
in the dreams that still wake you breathless.
Unearth her. Not all at once—you don't need
to burn everything down tonight—but slowly,
like archaeology of the self, brush away
the dust of years with gentle strokes.
Light one candle. Write one line.
Look up at the stars with wonder, just once.
Let mystery back in through a cracked window.
She'll find her way to you, that barefoot girl
with ink-stained fingers and coffee-dark eyes,
that girl who knew love was worth the falling.
She's been waiting. She's been patient.
She's never stopped believing in you.