The Place I Return To #WriteAPageADay @Blogchatter

There is a place I visit often
without packing a bag,
without buying a ticket,
without telling anyone I’m leaving.

It doesn’t appear on maps.
No pin drops there.
Yet my mind knows the route by heart,
like a river remembers its curve
even after drought.

I go there in the quiet seconds
between notifications,
in the soft ache before sleep,
in the pause after a sentence
when I don’t know what to say next.

The place looks ordinary at first.
A threshold.
A doorway half-open.
Light spilling in like a question
that doesn’t demand an answer.

It smells of dust and rain.
Of old books and warm earth.
Of something once loved
and not entirely lost.

I step inside myself
as if entering a childhood home
that has learned to age without me.
The walls listen.
The floorboards remember my weight.

Here, time does not move forward.
It breathes.
Inhales memory.
Exhales possibility.

I sit by a window that faces inward.
Outside it, the sky is always evening—
that hour when the sun is undecided,
when shadows stretch like tired animals,
when everything feels briefly honest.

This is where I replay conversations
that never finished properly.
Words I swallowed.
Apologies that arrived late.
Laughter that surprised me
and stayed longer than expected.

Sometimes I argue with myself here.
Sometimes I forgive.
Sometimes I just listen
to the low hum of being alive,
the background music we ignore
until it goes silent.

The place has a river.
Not water exactly—
more like thought in motion.
It carries fragments:
faces, street corners,
songs heard once and never again.

I watch them drift past
without trying to catch them anymore.
I have learned
that meaning isn’t always in holding,
sometimes it’s in letting float.

Above the river,
the sky opens wider than logic allows.
Stars appear even before night agrees.
They don’t shine loudly.
They persist.

I recognize that kind of courage.

When the world feels too sharp,
too loud with opinions and urgency,
I come here to remember
that existence is older than my fear.
That the universe has survived
far worse confusion than mine.

In this place,
my failures shrink to human size.
My regrets soften their grip.
They become teachers instead of judges,
pointing quietly to where I stopped listening.

I walk further in.
The ground turns granular—
sand mixed with stardust.
Each step feels like
walking across centuries.

I see versions of myself
sitting on stones,
looking up,
looking lost,
looking hopeful despite evidence.

I don’t scold them.
I nod.
We share an understanding
that survival is not the same as living,
and both require courage.

There is a clearing here
where the mind finally unclenches.
Thoughts stop performing.
They lie down like animals
that trust the dark.

In that clearing,
I sense the quiet architecture of the cosmos.
Not as something distant,
but as something intimate—
the same math humming in my blood
that bends galaxies into spirals.

I realize I am not separate
from the night sky.
I am made of its leftovers.
Borrowed light.
Temporary arrangement.

And this is not frightening.
It is deeply relieving.

Because if I am small,
then my pain does not have to be monumental.
If I am brief,
then my joy matters even more.

I lie back in this imagined place
and let the universe pass through me—
the slow spin of planets,
the patient collapse of stars,
the long patience of dark matter
holding everything together
without applause.

I think of people I love.
How they orbit my life,
sometimes close,
sometimes distant,
sometimes leaving entirely.

I understand now
that love is not possession
but gravity—
a pull that shapes paths
even when bodies drift apart.

The place teaches me this
again and again,
without words,
without force.

Eventually, I stand to leave.
I always do.
The world calls with its demands,
its clocks and crossings,
its endless need for response.

But I don’t rush.
I take a final look at the sky inside me,
at the river still carrying thought,
at the quiet doorway
that never truly closes.

I know I will return.

I always do—
in moments of doubt,
in flashes of wonder,
in the small hours
when sleep loosens its grip
and truth slips in.

This place is not escape.
It is alignment.
A reminder that beneath my roles,
beneath my fears and ambitions,
there is a vast, listening stillness
that knows exactly who I am.

And wherever I walk in the world,
whatever names I answer to,
whatever storms pass through me,
this place walks with me—
a private cosmos,
a familiar silence,
a home I carry
without ever having to explain.