Before the stars rehearsed their roles,  
before gravity sang mass into form,  
I was not matter dreaming of mind  
I was the silence before silence,  
not erased,  
but unread.

No dark,  
for dark implies the possibility of sight.  
No void,  
for even void is a presence named.  
I was the note  
before music knew it could be sung,  
an unnamed vector in a world not yet measured.

Philosophy once claimed I was nothing.  
But what is "nothing," if not the most misunderstood concept?  
Not emptiness but unmanifest.  
Not absence—but essence, yet to become.

Plato said we are born forgetting,  
that the soul knows before it sees  
perhaps what we call "birth"  
is not beginning,  
but remembering through veils.

And Leibniz wondered:  
Why is there something rather than nothing?  
Why this symphony of laws,  
this harmony pre-engraved in the bones of being?  
Might we, too, be written  
into that cosmic score?

Kant taught that behind all perception  
lies the noumenon the real,  
forever beyond the grasp of sense.  
If death is the end of appearances,  
could it not be  
the beginning of truth?

And what of consciousness  
that unyielding riddle?  
Neurons fire, but the spark is not explained.  
Subjectivity the "I" remains  
unreduced, unmeasured,  
a ghost in the formula.  
Even science, in its highest honesty,  
admits: We do not know.

So let us not pretend  
that the end is written.  
Let us not confuse silence  
with absence.

If I was nothing,  
then I was the kind of nothing  
that births galaxies.  
The same kind of nothing  
that split into stars and eyes  
and minds that now ask why.

I do not fear the end  
for what ends  
may only end from here.  
And “here” is a narrow keyhole  
through which we glimpse  
an infinite door.

So let me be everything  
in the space between
not to defy the void,  
but to dance with its mystery.

For if I return to nothing,  
let it be  
the kind of nothing  
that gave rise to this.

I grow,  
like rivers do
not knowing where the ocean ends,  
only that I must keep moving.

Each sunrise asks more of me  
to be wiser,  
braver,  
less like who I was.

But what if this never stops?  
What if peace  
is just a carrot on a string,  
dangling from the hand of time?

I run,  
even when I long to rest  
my own breath  
a ghost chasing me.

The road shifts beneath my feet  
stone turns to sand,  
and still I press forward,  
scared of stopping,  
scared of never arriving.

But what if the finish line
was never meant for me?
What if all this running,
all this becoming,
leads nowhere
but further from stillness?

What if I spend my whole life
searching for a place
where meaning and peace
finally hold each other
and never find it?

What if I grow
into a thousand versions of myself
but never into the one
who can just
be?

She never loved the rain  
not like those stories tell it.  
It wasn’t some whimsical dance;  
it was cold,  
and she had enough weight on her shoulders  
without the sky adding more.

But inside her,  
something still flickered
not loudly,  
not for show  
a kind of warmth that only revealed itself  
when the world wasn’t looking.

She didn’t chase illusions.  
Her dreams had roots,  
not wings
and when she imagined,  
it was with intention,  
as if even wonder  
deserved to be held carefully.

She bore her burdens  
not like armor  
but like roots  
tangled, deep,  
invisible to most  
but shaping everything above the surface.

She was not light-hearted.  
She was deep-hearted.

And the world  
impatient with stillness  
often mistook her silence for absence,  
her softness for retreat.  
But I saw the truth:

she was waiting to be seen
the way stars are:
recognized
for the light they’ve always given.

I am a library lit with a thousand tongues,  
Fluent in puzzles, in people, in plans undone  
I trace constellations in minds not mine,  
A scholar of signs, of subtext and time.  

I’ve worn every mask, played every part,  
Spoken with grace while tearing apart.  
I’ve answered questions I never lived,  
And gifted truths I could not give.  

My hands know tools from every trade,  
Blueprints etched and craftsman-made.  
Yet when I turn those hands to me,  
They tremble—unskilled, uncertain, unfree.  

I map out others like open books,  
Read between their silent looks.  
But I’m a cipher, lost in ink
A page unread, too scared to think.  

I solve their riddles, calm their storms,  
Perform the role that wisdom performs.  
But mastery hides from my own gaze,  
Like smoke in mirrors or memory's haze.  

They call me clever, sharp, well-spun  
A jack of all trades... master of none.  
But worse: I’m a stranger in my own skin,  
A craftsman locked from the world within.  

I know the gears, the wires, the code,  
I’ve carried minds like heavy loads.  
Yet I trip inside where shadows swell,  
No map to chart my private hell.  

A wielder of skills, yet bound just the same.
Not by sword, nor rule, nor written decree,
But by the self that still evades me.

The butterfly was born
in the belly of a leaf,
where no one could see her
just a soft, blind hunger
curling through green silence.

She never saw her mother.
She never knew
if someone waited for her to arrive.

She only knew
how to eat the world
until it disappeared.

Then came the stillness
a cocoon spun from instinct and fear.
Inside,
her body came apart in the dark.
She dissolved into something
that was not her,
and waited.

When she emerged,
she shook with light.
A butterfly
delicate as breath on a mirror.
No one told her she was beautiful.
She just flew,
because the wind said go.

She didn’t know
it would only last
three days.

But oh
how she loved them.

She loved the morning dew
on dandelions too tired to bloom.
She loved the ache of sunlight
slipping through broken clouds.
She loved
landing on children
who thought she was magic
but never asked her name.

And on the third evening,
as the sky turned to ash,
she rested
on a wildflower
no one had watered.

Her wings were torn.
She couldn’t lift them.
She watched the stars come out,
one by one,
and wondered
if any of them were watching back.

When the wind came again,
she didn’t follow.
She only closed her eyes
and waited to be forgotten
gently.

Within my chest, a garden pulses,  
roots tangled in quiet intensity;  
each heartbeat cultivating colors unseen,  
vibrant blossoms born from tender ache,  
and silken petals steeped in silent longing.

Every sensation cascades gently inward,  
streams of subtle fire carving valleys
softly etching canyons of profound empathy,  
where whispered moments pool,  
reflecting constellations beneath my skin.

I sense life's weight in feathered touches,  
grains of joy and sorrow balanced delicately,  
their subtle pressure leaving echoes  
as intricate as veins upon a leaf,  
or dewdrops trembling on a spider's web.

My emotions are twilight symphonies
notes both luminous and shadowed,  
harmonies constructed from delicate pain,  
rhythms measured by breaths held and released,  
each silence profound as a thousand melodies.

Through such sweet torment,  
my spirit crafts meaning from tenderness,  
forming quiet revolutions in perception;  
sorrow softens into insightful wisdom,  
fragility births unyielding strength.

Thus, I tend lovingly this internal wilderness,  
cherishing its delicate complexity;  
for in bleeding softly, courageously,  
I discover the poetry woven deeply within
my heart, gently wounded, eternally alive.