Alone I have walked where the silence is long,
No chorus behind me, no guiding song.
The roads I have taken were jagged, unplanned,
Each stumble a teacher, each scar a hand.
I learned that the fire refines what it burns,
That wisdom is earned in the weight of returns.
No lesson is gentle, no mercy is free,
Yet each leaves a mark that has fashioned me.
But time is a river that will not be still,
It rushes unheeding of hope or will.
It carries the weak, it carries the strong,
And never looks back as it hurries along.
So I stand in the current, steadfast, alone,
Shaped by the hours that cut me to bone.
The world will keep turning, indifferent, untrue
But I keep on learning, and still I push through.
I’ve watched constellations give way to the dawn,
And moments I cherished slip quietly on.
The laughter, the sorrow, the losses, the gain
All swept in the tide that no hand can restrain.
Yet even as seasons fall faster each year,
The silence within me grows steady, sincere.
For strength is not found in what time can erase,
But in bearing its weight with a patient grace.
And when the last ember of memory glows,
What lingers is not what the calendar shows.
But the truths we have carried, the love we have sown,
The steps we have taken, however alone.
And when all else has faded, when echoes are gone,
Time marches onward, and the world carries on.
For the measure of living is not what we own,
It’s the courage to walk when we walk alone.
POETRY 