Here in this suffering, this crucible womb,
The known gods falter, their altars go blind.
Each creed, once golden, now echoes of doom,
Are stripped by the blaze of a self left behind.

The fire, a trickster, conjured by me,
Fed on illusions, I named as my truth,
Burned every surety, scorched every plea,
And laughed in the voice of my long-lost youth.

Beliefs like paper, curled in despair,
Whispered of meaning as smoke drew near;
No prayer could escape, no breath of air,
Only silence now, and the sting of fear.

Oh, sacred pyre, dark alchemist flame,
You steal without mercy, without regret.
Yet in your furnace, I learn my name,
One I had buried, one I’d forget.

Entombed in ash, no breath, no form,
Not dead, but held in the hush of becoming.
This, the still of the spiral storm,
Where soul sheds skin and blood stops drumming.

And then...

In the hush, a tremor, soft as thought.
From soot, from ruin, from what was unmade,
A flicker, a shimmer, a heartbeat caught,
A wing unfolds in the charcoal shade.

Phoenix, I rise, raw, unmasked, untried,
No longer chained to the truths I knew.
From the furnace of lies and the self that died,
Emerges a being fierce and new.

More beautiful now for the burn I bore,
More sovereign now for the faith I lost,
For to rise is not to be as before,
But to bear the bloom that survived the cost.

I’d cut my soul, oh yes, my soul,
into a million glimmering shards of fire,
and fling them skyward with trembling hands
to form a constellation you might name Desire.
A compass made of wound and will,
to guide you home through storm and still.

Each fragment, bright with ache and grace,
would hum with hymns from long-lost place,
where memory meets the marrow’s song,
and even silence learns to belong.
I’d stitch the sky with every piece,
until your sadness found release.

And should you tremble in the dark,
loathe the lines upon your face,
or scorn the parts you’d dare not mark,
I’d kneel before that tender space.
With ink made from my bleeding trust,
I’d write sonnets into your stardust.

To the furrowed brow, the shame you hide,
the corners where your fears reside,
I’d sing. Not of perfection’s light,
but of your jagged, holy night.
Of crooked teeth and childhood scars,
of all that makes you who you are.

I’d stand, yes, still, in shadow’s keep,
beside the ghosts you try to sweep,
and whisper, “Love, I do not flee,
your night has always sheltered me.”
For dark is not the end of light,
but where stars dream themselves alight.

So let me burn, if burn I must,
my soul a lantern wrought from trust.
And know, though storms may steal your flame,
my light will spell your secret name.
And guide you, love, through fear and moan,
a constellation to lead you home.

They do not speak of dying,
not in the quiet grocery line,
not beneath the flicker of café lights,
not when the sky loosens its robe of stars,
and oh, what a grave mistake.

For death is not some villain in a cloak,
but the oldest truth,
the shadow stitched to your soles,
the hush behind the heartbeat.
And if you dare to meet it,
not with dread, but with reverence,
you live.

Not someday.
Now.

With a fire that does not ask for permission,
you will step out of the anger rooms,
shed the shroud of “what will they think,”
and walk barefoot into your wild life,
untamed, imperfect, and exquisitely yours.

A child who has tasted death’s breath,
returns with eyes older than calendars,
not brave, but lucid.
Not reckless, but awake.

You see, it is not courage,
to sip the rain like wine,
to laugh so hard the stars come closer,
it is logic.
It is sense.
It is the compass of those who know the road ends,
so they sing while walking.

So love.
Not as a performance, but as a pulse.

Learn.
Not for praise, but for wonder.

Taste.
The peach, the kiss, the grief, the salt.

And leave behind no legacy but this:

That you were here.
Truly.
Madly.
Moment by moment, as a brief candle,
burning unapologetically in the wind.

There were words I loosed like doves in flame,
Believing then they sang my name.
They circled truths I thought were stone,
But time has taught me bone is bone.
It bends, it breaks, it mends anew,
And so, my thinking shifted too.

There were paths I carved with fervent feet,
Mistaking hunger for the heat.
I danced with shadows, dressed in pride,
I kissed ideals I now let slide.
Not out of shame, nor some disguise,
But from the way that wisdom sighs.

No, I wear no doubled face,
No costume stitched with sly disgrace.
I do not play at saint or sin,
But simply shed my older skin.
The soul, like sea, must ebb and swell,
What once was right may not still dwell.

Growth is not betrayal’s twin,
It is the echoing voice within.
That softens stone and clears the dust,
That asks, “What now deserves your trust?”
And so I rise, unchained from past,
Not fixed in marble, but made to last.

Judge me not by yesteryear,
But by the will that brought me here.
I bloom, I stumble, I redefine,
Each version still a thread of mine.
For even stars must shift their place,
And find new fire in endless space.

So let me change, and let it be,
A hymn to our humanity.
Not proof I’ve lost my truest hue,
But proof I’ve lived, and listened, too.

What if I told you, in hush not heard, but felt,
That the ache you name as longing
is the echo of a promise kept?
Not in some far-off fortune,
but in a chamber of the Now
where time folds in upon itself
like linen soft with memory.

You want it deeply, don't you?
That golden glint behind your ribs,
the ache that doesn’t bruise but burns,
not a wound, but a whisper.
It is not born of lack.
It is the future’s fragrant breath
blooming backward into your soul.

These aren’t dreams, my love,
they are breadcrumbs dropped
by a wiser You who’s already danced
through that doorway,
wearing the life you crave
like sunlight wears the morning.

Intuition isn’t guessing,
it’s remembering,
as the river remembers the sea.
Desire is not begging,
it is recognition,
a soul pointing to its own reflection
just beyond the veil.

So walk like it’s yours.
Breathe it. Speak it.
Dress your days in its colour.
Let the vision not be a someday shrine
but a mirror, a map, a marrow.

Because what you want is not ahead,
it is within,
waiting only
to be believed in.

I close the book, its spine sighs shut,
the whisper of a thousand nights drawn in.
A chapter folds like hands in prayer,
but not all endings are so clean.

The lantern dims. The room forgets.
Yet on my fingers, dusk still clings,
not with fire, but with a bruise,
of words that bled with shaken wings.

I turned the page; it turned me back,
a mirror’s glance, a hollow swell.
The tale is done, but silence keeps,
what ink refuses to quell.

The parchment sleeps, but I remain
marked by the shadows love once wore.
We name it "past", but past is ink,
and ink remembers so much more.

So let the book stay closed awhile,
beneath the dust, beneath the rain.
The lines may fade, but not the ache,
of what was written in hurried vein.

I do not know what waits beyond
This pale horizon’s shifting seam,
The road is fog, the stars are gone,
Yet still I follow some old dream.

No map, no mark, no prophet’s voice,
No compass etched in stone or sky,
Just breath and hush, a wavering choice,
To walk, though every reason asks me why.

Each footfall hums a softer tune,
Not brave, not bold, but something near,
A whisper shaped beneath the moon,
Not “Go,” but simply, “Still be here.”

And is that not what hope becomes,
A rhythm carried in the chest?
Not knowing where the morning drums,
But rising still, and doing our best.

So let the dark be what it is,
A cloak, a gate, a sea unspun,
My soul has learned the art of this,
To step, not seeing, toward the sun.

For poetry walks where language breaks,
In silences the heart completes,
Each step a faith the future takes,
Though blind, the path beneath me speaks.