embers

And I stand before you 

in the most vulnerable moment of the year.

With empty hands and a tired chest.

I feel so alone and abandoned, searching for an escape that doesn’t come as a flight,

but as a lifeline.

The people I believed were my support let go of my hands,

and allowed me to fall without looking back,

as if the abyss had no end,

or as if I did not deserve to be rescued.

Falling hurts.

But what hurts the most is realizing that, in the silence of the fall,

no one calls your name.

In the abyss, I found a story.

Not one that saved me immediately,

but one that forced me to face what I had always avoided.

There, I discovered a world I swore I didn’t need,

a world I never thought I would accept,

and yet, it ended up accepting me.

That world taught me that walls are not always built to protect,

but to keep us small.

That there are barriers we inherit,

truths repeated so often they stop being questioned,

and securities that, with time, turn into cages.

I learned that living behind them is comfortable,

but comfort, too, can suffocate.

I also understood that freedom is neither bright nor gentle.

Freedom hurts.

It tears dreams apart, breaks bonds,

and forces you to carry the weight of your own choices.

No one talks about the cost of being free,

about the loneliness that comes with choosing for yourself,

about the guilt that follows every step forward.

In that world, there are no untouched heroes.

Only broken people who keep moving because standing still would be worse.

People who learn that good and evil are not absolute,

that even hands stained with blood once trembled with fear,

and that the true monster does not always roar:

sometimes it hides in the fear of losing,

in the obsession with surviving,

or in the desperate need to protect what little remains.

The truth, I discovered, does not save you.

It destroys first.

It rips away innocence, burns the comfortable versions of reality,

and leaves ashes where faith once lived.

But within those ashes, if you dare to look closely,

there are still embers burning.

Embers is born there.

In what remains after the fire.

In the parts of me that did not go out when everything burned.

This is not a story about winning,

but about continuing to walk even without promises.

About accepting that the world can be cruel

and still choosing not to close your eyes.

This is not a story full of hope.

It is an honest one.

Made of fear, of loss, and of embers that refuse to die out.

Because even in the abyss,

even when everything seems consumed,

something within us keeps burning.

And as long as a single ember remains,

the story is not over yet.