After The Night of Noise

I entered the night full of warmth and wonder,

believing my small light would find its echo.

I called inward

to the One within my chest,

but echoes need stillness to return,

and there was only motion.

Bodies glowed like lanterns without flame,

faces bright, hearts dim.

Fear sat beside pride,

and hands reached out

not to love,

but to prove.

The river of life became a whirl of sound.

We danced, yet none were moved.

Freedom wore hunger’s face,

and escape called itself release.

The music promised flight,

but left us heavier than before.

My body whispered first.

Something felt wrong,

unsafe, unseen.

Even to release water

felt impossible.

I closed

where trust should have opened.

When the noise finally broke,

no joy waited,

only a heavy quiet,

a hollow ringing

where laughter had been.

Silence walked me home,

tender and enormous.

It placed its hand upon my chest,

and everything buried began to rise:

shame, sorrow,

the ache of being unseen.

I wanted to flee,

to fill the emptiness,

to forget,

but something whispered,

Stay.

So I sat inside the pain

as one might sit beside a dying fire.

It burned, but also revealed.

The wound said,

I am not your enemy.

I am the door you would not open.

And when I listened,

tears came,

slow, trembling, unplanned.

Not of despair,

but of release.

Each one carried a truth

my body had known all along.

In their salt I tasted life returning,

raw and simple.

The fire softened.

Something within me exhaled.

Light slipped through the crack,

soft, ancient, alive.

Tears came not for what was lost,

but for what had never been,

for the Beloved I had forgotten,

though He had never left.

To feel is holy:

to bow to the ache

until it becomes light.

Then I looked again,

all those hollow lanterns

were souls once burning bright,

each searching for its echo.

Forgiveness rose like dawn

beneath a closed door.

Something opened,

not a wound,

but a window.

Through it entered

what was kind, unnamed, eternal.

True light does not burn to be seen.

Darkness is a mirror for the glow within.

And I stood again,

not knowing what comes next,

only that I would meet it open.

The night was not over,

nor the dawn begun,

and in that in-between

I found peace and light.