Vinita Agrawal
In the courtyard, I stand
under the rising shell of a moon,
its pale glow, a mirror
to the self I’ve shed.
I bathe in its gleam,
balance in the pivot
of light and dark,
and learn to love
the in-between.
I stand there, in the craters
of many abandonments, thinking:
Liberation is not always beautiful,
not always kind.
Sometimes it is the sound
of something giving way,
the weight of years
finally too much to bear.
A quiet collapse,
form no longer bound
to the sky or the earth.
No one weeping, no one cheering—
the world simply moving on,
tires rolling over the remains of a life,
dust rising to kiss
the windshields of passing cars.
At last
a new room for new nests, new wings,
for the sky to stretch itself—
wide and unburdened.
Liberation is not the breaking
of the walls, it is the plant
growing quietly
in the cracks left behind.
Not the absence of heaviness,
but the courage to rise
despite it.