I have spent years knocking on doors,
searching for meaning as if it were locked away,
as if the answers sat behind gates I had yet to open.
But what if there are no gates?
What if the path is beneath me,
and I have been walking on it all along?

I grip time like a rope,
as if holding tighter will make it stay,
as if the breath I take now
is promised to me in the next moment.
But nothing belongs to me,
not my name, not my past,
not even the ones I love.
Everything is passing through,
like water in my hands,
like wind in the folds of a traveling cloak.

And love—
oh, love is not waiting somewhere in the distance,
not a treasure to be found,
not a prize to be earned.
Love is already here,
in the spaces between words,
in the hands that touch without asking,
in the quiet knowing of two souls
that recognize each other beyond time.

So what else is there to do?
To walk, knowing I will never arrive.
To give, knowing nothing was mine to keep.
To love, knowing I will leave
but will never be lost.

Did the ocean ever ask
where the river has gone?
Did the sky ever mourn
the bird who no longer flies within it?
We return.
We always return.