Beneath the Layers: A River, a Cosmos, and the Quiet Return to Self

I have worn so many skins
that sometimes I forget
the original temperature of my own breath.

Morning lays its thin gold hand
across the window,
and I stand there,
not quite awake,
not quite a dream,
touching the quiet air
as if it might remember me
better than I remember myself.

There are rooms inside me
that echo with old laughter,
corridors dusted with unsent letters,
footsteps of choices
that still pace in circles.

I peel the day like fruit,
careful not to bruise it,
and underneath its brightness
I find the softer pulp
of doubt,
of longing,
of unnamed hunger.

I keep descending—
past the polite smile,
past the practiced answers,
past the well-stitched narratives
I offer to the world—

beneath the layers

The earth after rain
knows this descent.
Its fragrance rises
from broken soil,
from roots that twist and listen
in the dark.

When I kneel on damp ground,
my palms pressed into the breathing mud,
I feel the pulse of something ancient
traveling upward—
a slow reassurance
that nothing true is ever lost,
only buried
for a season.

In the afternoons,
clouds drift like forgotten thoughts
across the sky’s vast forehead.
I lie on my back in the field
and let them pass through me.
They resemble the faces
I have loved,
each dissolving
into a more spacious blue.

There are names I once carried
as if they were sacred stones
in my pocket.
I rub them smooth
with memory,
with regret,
with gratitude.

But even stones erode.
Even mountains bend
under the patient grammar of wind.

I have begun to trust
erosion.

The way the sea
repeats its silver syllable
against the shore,
insisting
that surrender is not defeat
but dialogue.

At twilight,
when the birds return
to their shadowed branches,
I feel my own migration inward.
The world’s noise softens
to a hush of crickets and faraway trains.

I light a single lamp
and sit with the silence.
It is not empty.
It is layered with echoes—
my childhood laughter
bouncing off kitchen tiles,
my mother’s hands
moving through lentils and sunlight,
my father’s quiet gaze
resting on an unfinished newspaper.

I see how each moment
was a seed.
Some sprouted into forests.
Some remained dormant,
waiting for the right sorrow
to crack them open.

There was a time
when I mistook busyness
for belonging.
I ran through cities
as if speed could make me real.
Neon signs flickered in my veins,
and I mistook their glare
for stars.

But one evening,
on a bridge overlooking a restless current,
I leaned against cold iron
and listened.

The water moved with a patience
I did not possess.
It carried leaves,
broken twigs,
the glint of distant lights—
yet it remained itself.

Something in me stilled.
The arguments I rehearsed
lost their urgency.
The ambitions I polished
felt suddenly weightless.

I closed my eyes,
and in that breathing dark

the river whispers to me

It does not speak in language.
It speaks in motion.
In the way it curves around resistance
without resentment.
In the way it gathers tributaries
without losing its direction.

It tells me
that my fractures
are simply confluences waiting to happen.

I open my eyes
to a sky turning indigo,
its first star trembling
like a thought about to be born.

The cosmos does not rush.
Galaxies spiral
in luminous patience.
Light travels years
to reach the soft astonishment
of my retina.

Why then
do I hurry my becoming?

I am both river and shore,
both current and stone.
Within me,
memories orbit like moons—
some bright with forgiveness,
others cratered with unfinished grief.

I walk home that night
with the sound of water
threaded through my chest.
It does not fade.
It deepens.

Days pass.
Seasons shift their garments.
The neem tree outside my window
sheds and renews itself
without ceremony.

I watch its leaves
turn brittle,
then drift downward
like tiny green prayers
returning to earth.

Loss, I realize,
is only the tree
making room for sky.

I begin to practice
a gentler seeing.

When anger rises,
I do not banish it.
I trace its roots
back to unmet tenderness.
When fear tightens my throat,
I ask what fragile hope
it is guarding.

Each emotion becomes a doorway.
Each doorway opens
into another chamber
of breath.

I sit by the window
during a storm
and let thunder shake
the scaffolding of certainty.
Lightning splits the horizon
into sudden clarity.

For a heartbeat
everything is illuminated—
the trembling leaves,
the slick road,
the startled dog
seeking shelter.

Then darkness returns,
not as an enemy,
but as a canvas.

In that canvas
I sense constellations forming—
patterns I could not see
when I insisted
on perpetual daylight.

I begin to sense
how my personal story
is a thin filament
woven into a much vaster tapestry.

The sorrow I once believed
was uniquely mine
echoes in countless chests.
The joy that startled me
into laughter
is mirrored in unseen rooms
across continents.

I am not solitary.
I am a note
in a symphony still unfolding.

Sometimes,
in the early hours
before the sun breaks
its saffron silence,
I feel the universe
breathing through me.

My inhale gathers
the cool blue of night.
My exhale releases
a quiet warmth
into the waking world.

I am porous.
The boundaries I defended
soften like mist.

Beneath ambition,
beneath shame,
beneath the layered sediment
of comparison and praise,
there is a simple pulse—

a luminous is-ness
that requires no ornament.

I return to the field
where I once watched the clouds.
The grass is taller now.
Seeds cling to my ankles
like persistent questions.

I do not brush them away.

I lie down again,
feeling the planet’s slow rotation
cradle my spine.
Above me,
the sky opens
into immeasurable depth.

I imagine ancient stardust
drifting for eons
before assembling
into bone and blood and thought.

I am that drift
momentarily aware of itself.

And in this awareness
I sense forgiveness—
not as absolution,
but as expansion.

The mistakes I catalogued
with harsh precision
begin to dissolve
into context.

I see how each misstep
tilted me
toward humility.
How each heartbreak
cracked me open
enough to let compassion seep in.

The river’s whisper
has not left me.
It hums beneath conversations,
beneath deadlines,
beneath the quiet clink of dishes
at night.

It reminds me
that stillness
is not stagnation.
That depth
is not darkness.

When I sit with a friend
and truly listen,
I feel the current move between us.
When I forgive myself
for not knowing sooner,
I feel sediment settle,
water clear.

The moon waxes and wanes
above my small balcony.
Its changing face
mirrors my own cycles.

There are nights
when I feel hollow,
a crescent of myself.
There are nights
when I feel full,
spilling silver into everything I touch.

Both are true.
Both are necessary.

I am learning
that growth is not a straight ascent
but a spiral—
returning to familiar ground
with wider vision.

Each return
reveals another layer
ready to loosen,
ready to fall away
like bark
from a maturing tree.

And beneath that bark
is tender green,
almost translucent
with possibility.

I no longer fear
the shedding.
I no longer cling
to the masks
that once felt protective.

The earth beneath my feet
is patient with my transformation.
The stars above
do not judge my pace.

I walk toward the river again,
not in urgency
but in companionship.

Its surface reflects
the wide evening sky.
Clouds drift across water
as if heaven and earth
are rehearsing their unity.

I kneel at the bank
and cup my hands.
The water slips through my fingers,
cool and immediate.

It does not try to remain.
It trusts its own continuity.

In that slipping
I glimpse my own becoming—
not fixed,
not final,
but flowing.

I lift my wet palms
to my face
and let droplets trace
their brief, shining paths.

They fall back
to the source
without regret.

I breathe in deeply.
The scent of algae,
of silt,
of sun-warmed stone
fills me with a quiet certainty.

The journey inward
has widened
into horizon.

What I once sought
as identity
has softened into presence.
What I once clutched
as control
has opened into trust.

The layers continue to fall—
not violently,
not all at once,
but like petals
yielding to gravity.

And in the tender space
they reveal,
I feel something stirring—
not dramatic,
not loud,
but steady as dawn.

The sky blushes faintly
in the east.
Birdsong begins
as a tentative thread
and grows into chorus.

I stand there,
feet rooted in cool sand,
heart aligned
with the rhythm of water and wing.

The cosmos does not feel distant now.
It feels intimate—
woven into breath,
into pulse,
into the quiet miracle
of simply being here.

I close my eyes once more,
not to escape,
but to feel more fully
the vastness moving through me.

And in that still, widening hush,
I know without spectacle,
without proclamation,
without fear—

renewal draws near