Waking
I wandered off the road again,
a path I couldn’t trace,
and stumbled on a crowded town
where every soul seemed strange.
Too tired to keep searching on,
too worn to roam alone,
so I stayed among their voices
far away from what was home.
I copied words I barely knew,
their gestures and their tone,
learned customs like a borrowed coat
until they felt my own.
I called them friends, or tried to,
though something felt untrue,
for deep inside I understood
they always somehow knew.
They knew I was an outsider,
an echo out of place,
a stranger wearing borrowed skin
they’d never quite embrace.
Yet one among them caught my eye—
dark hair and ocean blue—
a girl who seemed as lost as I,
though she never had a clue.
They claimed to know her spirit,
as if they could pretend,
as though by saying she was theirs
they’d make the story end.
But why was I the misfit here?
Why could I never blend?
And why did thoughts of her alone
return me to the end?
Because she woke the truth in me,
she made my vision clear—
that I must leave this borrowed life
and disappear from here.
How I would take her with me
to roads where we belong,
but she still dreams inside their world
and thinks there’s nothing wrong.
Her eyes ignite a fragile hope,
a spark that cuts the gloom,
a ray of light from metal rings
that softly start to bloom.
And strange it is that someone rare,
one never meant to stay,
could be the quiet voice that tells
a stranger: walk away.
So now the road awaits again,
the path I always knew.
I have to go.