Again

I have walked this road a hundred times,
knowing where the old tree leans,
where the pavement breaks,
where the morning light gathers
between two familiar buildings.

Today, I walk it slowly.

Nothing has changed—
and everything has.

The same tea stall breathes its steam,
the same bicycle bell rings somewhere behind me,
the same wind searches my pockets
for a forgotten winter.

Yet I am not the person
who walked here yesterday.

Perhaps that is how life begins again:
not with a new road,
but with old footsteps
belonging to someone changed.

I stop at the corner
where I once hurried past
without looking.

For the first time,
I notice the blue door,
the sparrow on the wire,
the single yellow flower
growing through a crack in the wall.

I stand there
as though the world
has just been invented.

And then I understand—

nothing becomes new
because it has never happened before.

Sometimes it becomes new
because we have.

So I take the familiar road home,
carrying the same evening
inside a different heart,

and for the first time,
I am coming home

again.