I did not know it then
how much of my life I spent
in pursuit of people
who stood behind curtains,
who spoke in half-gestures,
who never saw me at all.
And I
I mistook their silence for grace,
their distance for depth,
wasted hours praising shadows,
thinking they were saints.

Age crept in like a quiet thief
while I argued with the wind,
burning every bridge behind me
not for revenge,
but for honesty
because I couldn’t keep pretending
the path was paved with purpose
when all I saw were stones
and no clear road ahead.

I wandered through philosophies
like a drunk through alleys,
looking for the one window
still lit at 3 a.m.
some voice to say:
you were right to doubt,
you were right to bleed.
But every answer I found
sounded too rehearsed,
too clean,
like the kind of lie
taught in churches and schools
by those who never questioned
the god they worshipped.

I used to think there was something
waiting on the other side of pain
a reward, a reckoning,
a soft hand or a white gate
but the more I lived,
the more I saw how many men
broke themselves
waiting for something
that never came.

What if this is it?
What if all we ever had
was the breath between two silences,
the taste of wine on a Sunday night,
the brief flicker of touch
before sleep swallows us whole?

The world has always belonged
to those who claimed certainty.
They built empires on our questions,
wrote sacred texts from our fear,
used our doubt
as currency
to buy power,
to sell guilt.

And we—we folded our hands,
pretended to be holy,
afraid to ask:
what if no one is watching?
what if no one ever was?

Still, I don't mind now.
Whether the end is fire,
or dust,
or just a deep forgetting,
I find peace in knowing
that my suffering
was not for applause,
that no angel tallied my failures,
no devil stoked the furnace
for my crimes.

I live now
not because I believe,
but because I breathe.
I wake not with purpose,
but with hunger
to feel, to see, to ruin, to rise.

Let the priests whisper,
let the mystics dream.
I will walk this road barefoot,
****** if I must,
toward the same silence
that swallows kings and beggars alike.

Because in the end,
there is only one truth worth knowing
that none of us knows
and that this
is the only freedom
we were ever given.