For years I was nothing but driftwood,
adrift in an endless black tide,
my lungs filling with silence,
my days spent counting shadows
instead of stars.

I mistook survival for breathing,
and called the echo of my pulse a life.
The void was a mirror with no face,
and I floated there
a ghost rehearsing existence.

But now
a crack has formed in the horizon,
light leaking through like a forgotten promise.
My fingers, once numb,
claw at the edges of the dark.
I rise, not as the same husk,
but as fire rekindled by my own hands.

Each step is still heavy,
each breath a negotiation,
yet the air tastes less like rust
and more like morning.

I am not healed,
but I am healing.
I am not free,
but I am breaking the chains.
For the first time,
I am not chasing the world’s applause
but my own heartbeat
and it is enough.

I do not float anymore.
I walk, staggering, luminous,
a pilgrim of my own rebirth.