I’ve lived in a dark I can’t explain,
a space thick with silence, yet deafening—
a strange storm of stillness where I felt both
nothing and everything
all at once.

Days and nights blended like spilled ink,
no lines to divide, no edges to hold onto,
just a haze, like waking from a dream
that’s already slipping away,
fading into something forgotten,
or maybe it was never there.

There were moments I questioned my own hands,
the shape of my own face in the mirror—
did I know it, truly?
I doubted even the walls around me,
if they were real or just pieces
of some vast, unsolvable dream.

I watched my life as if from outside,
a spectator in my own skin,
my laughter hollow, echoing back with no weight,
no warmth, just a habit of sound.
Every word I spoke felt like a stranger’s,
every look exchanged like some cruel joke.

And in that numbness,
I became an absence, a shadow
moving through routines that held no tether,
no thread pulling me forward,
no anchor keeping me still.

It was as if something precious had been stolen,
something essential, though I never knew what—
a piece of me lost in the dark,
slipped from my fingers without me noticing.
And I started to believe,
that maybe this was it,
the shape of my life from now on,
a hollow sound, an empty shell
I’d grow used to wearing.

Months passed—
gray as rain, silent as snowfall.
Dreams twisted into nightmares,
but they left no trace, no memory,
just a feeling that lingered like smoke,
heavy in my lungs, lingering
long after I’d forgotten the flame.

But then, one night, like a whisper,
a voice soft and warm slipped through,
familiar yet foreign, gentle as rain,
washing over me in a way I’d forgotten,
reminding me what it felt like
to be touched by something real.

It was quiet, like the first light of dawn,
a mere shimmer breaking the edge of dark,
but it was there, clear and calm—
the sound of something that was mine.

For the first time in so long,
I felt it,
a sliver of warmth, a flicker of life,
as if I’d stumbled into something hidden,
waiting all this time, buried deep
beneath the weight of doubt.

My world shifted, almost imperceptibly,
but enough that I could feel it,
a change, like the start of breath
in a room that’s been silent for too long.

But I wondered—
was I even worthy of this light?
Did I have the courage
to seek out what was stolen?
Or would I hide,
cling to the comfort of dark
I’d come to know so well?

I wasn’t sure.
Not yet.

But I felt it—the pull, the invitation
to step forward, to let go of the shadows
one cautious inch at a time.
It was hard, harder than I ever imagined,
this first step into the unknown,
but it was mine, and I knew it.

Now, I’m learning to trust the whispers,
the soft, persistent glimmer
that breaks through the dark.
I don’t know where it leads,
or if I’ll ever find what I lost—
but there’s a hope now, fragile but fierce,
an ache that says maybe I can be whole again,
that I’m not too late.

Maybe, just maybe,
I’ll grow into the light I once forgot,
and one day, with a quiet certainty,
I’ll say I am free,
that I have been saved,
and this darkness was only
the beginning of something new.