Reaching For Peace

For years, I believed the darkness knew my name,

trailing behind me like a silent wolf

through moonlit woods and restless nights.

More than once, I wandered too close

to its waiting jaws,

feeling its shadows curl around my ankles

like roots beneath an ancient forest.

I spent countless seasons at war,

sword drawn against ghosts only I could see,

pleading with the stars above for a dawn that wouldn’t fade.

Then one morning,

as the sky blushed gold, a quiet truth arrived with the light.

The darkness had never come to claim me.`

It hungered only for what I carried

The spark in my chest,

The fire in my breath, and the magic I scattered so carelessly behind me.

So I gathered those scattered pieces.

I stitched them back into my spirit, with threads of wonder and creation.

I fed my energy to blooming things, like

to dreams,

to stories,

to the songs sleeping inside my bones.

And the darkness,

finding nothing left to feast upon,

drifted away like mist before sunrise.

Perhaps I won.

Perhaps there was never a battle to win.

But I learned to trust the lantern in my own hands,

and to follow its glow wherever life unfolded.

New doors appeared where walls once stood.

Wildflowers bloomed along forgotten paths.

The world seemed larger, softer, brighter.

And I discovered that emerging from the shadows was not the same as conquering them.

It was something far more beautiful.

It was choosing the light,

again and again.

Until, it became my home.