REGULUS

I stepped out into the sun

On an early summer day.

Choice—

It seemed that I had none

Apart from the choice to be brave.

With arms spread wide, 

Waiting for the cross and nail,

A final breath I drew

And cast the shadows ‘way.

Before stepping,

Slowly, into the iridescent light.

Head held high,

Ready at last

To claim what had always been mine.

Naked,

For what felt like the first time in my life.

Stripped of every lie,

Every disguise,

Every careful performance.

Where have you been, my soul?

Was I the one too lost for you to find?

Or were you there all along,

Hiding in plain sight,

Waiting patiently for me to realise.

I had waited for so long

That I forgot what I was waiting for.

I had waited for so long

To watch you bloom behind these hollow eyes.

And when I finally stepped into the sun,

I did not burn.

Something else did, though.

Something that had made the dark its home.

Something convinced it ought to remain hidden,

Exiled. Shackled. Cursed, Forbidden.

A secret, 

Unnamed and unheard,

Mistaking heaven for the dirt.

A shame so old

It had mistaken itself for skin and bone.

A vandalised pride,

Disfigured by ridicule and neglect,

Seeking comfort among thorns

And calling love its pain.

A will crippled by guilt,

More afraid of living

Than of death.

A grieving loneliness

Too shy to leave my side.

One by one,

They surrendered to the flames.

Under the sun,

They burned away,

And there I stood within the blaze—

With nothing left to lose,

And nothing left to gain.

Entranced,

Yet more awake than I had ever been.

Captivated,

Yet freer than I had ever felt.

A living paradox,

Suspended beneath an ocean of light/ immersed in a radiance

No words could even begin to describe.

My fears dissolved.

My doubts unraveled.

The mask they haunted

Split down the middle

And fell away.

Behind it,

A faceless face.

A familiar stranger.

Someone I had known forever

Yet never truly met.

Peeking through the curtains

Of a life half-lived.

Then the weight was gone.

The burden of becoming.

The exhausting demand

To be someone,

Something,

For someone.

Gone.

Thoughts once sharp as knives

Became light as summer wind.

Emotions once raging like storms

Settled into still waters.

For the first time,

Existence required no justification.

There was nothing to prove.

Nothing to earn.

Nothing to become.

I was enough.

Right there, present

Whole.

And in that impossible smallness,

I became immense.

So tiny

I could have been eternal.

A single fractal

Of an infinite soul.

And from somewhere deeper than thought,

Deeper than memory,

Deeper than the name I called myself,

A whisper rose:

Εν το παν.

The One is the All.