Every day, I feel myself fading

Like a sesame seed withering slowly in poisoned soil.  

There's a hollow ache within this shallow heart

A gaping emptiness, waiting to be filled with something real.  

  

I'm caught in the slow drag of passing time

Like a river frozen in winter

Longing to surge forward

But held back by forces I don't yet understand.  

  

Is this a force of nature—unchangeable, unbreakable?  

Or can it be bent, softened, melted with time?  

My mind wanders through a burning jungle

And I barely escape unscathed—  

A reindeer running for its life 

Desperate for open ground

For a clearing where I can finally breathe.

  

I try to look beyond the gray horizon 

But I'm blinded and weighed down  

By anxiety and the quiet ache of loneliness.  

Through ash-laden lashes  

I see only frost-bound forests  

And mountains buried under cold, lifeless ash.  

  

I can neither speak nor scream.  

But even in this silence

A small voice stirs beneath the hush—  

A faint, flickering light that refuses to die.  

  

Frayed thoughts of surrender pass through  

This hazy, lagging mind 

Yet something holds on

Something not yet broken.  

  

I am on the brink of becoming—  

Something more

Something whole.  

  

Even in this frozen stillness

There is life waiting to rise.  

And maybe, just maybe

This season will pass.