I have stopped believing in the polished shapes of beauty,
not because it has vanished,
but because it has began to look like disguises for absence.
What once seemed graceful now feels rehearsed,
as if even elegance has learned to imitate itself.
Still, I find myself returning to them in thought,
measuring each distance from what I no longer trust.
Every ideal carries its opposite inside it,
and heaven knows I cannot touch one side
without feeling drawn to the other answer.
My heart does not simply settle.
It expands and tightens in the same motion,
wanting something pure
while only recognizing purity after it has been broken.
Even love feels conditional now,
as if it must pass through damage to become real.
I think of greatness that rises by splitting itself,
of minds that climb toward certainty
only to discover contradiction waiting at the top.
What was called truth begins to divide in my burnt hands,
until belief and doubt share the same voice
and neither can be separated from the other.
There are moments when understanding feels like my collapse,
when clarity does not simplify the world
but doubles it.
Meaning does not arrive as answer
but as fracture that keeps widening.
And so I move through experience without resolution.
Nothing stays in one form for long.
Every judgment I try to make
turns and reveals its opposite face.
Even the self is not whole,
but a shifting boundary
between what I accept and what I cannot escape.
And the world responds in the same language
offering cruelty and tenderness in the same breath,
so that I can never tell
whether I am being guided
or undone.