सर उठा के मैंने तो कितनी ख्वाहिशें की थीं, कितने ख्वाब देखे थे… कितनी कोशिशें की थीं।

Some bonds are preserved by distance.

Not meeting is sometimes necessary.

I didn’t understand that before.

I think I’m beginning to.

I used to knock on every closed door.

Now I sit outside a few,

laugh a little,

and keep walking.

Tell me,

are you something I reach,

or something I become

when I stop reaching?

I ask this seriously.

Then I laugh,

because I still don’t know.

Breath enters, leaves, returns,

trusting the journey more than I do.

Something inside me sits quietly,

like a lake before sunrise,

untouched by my confusion.

You are not a temple.

Not a name.

Not a destination on any map I know.

Maybe you are what remains

when I stop arguing with the road,

when dust settles on my shoes

and I no longer ask where it leads.

If devotion means surrender,

I am learning slowly,

loosening my grip,

missing a few steps,

finding rhythm again.

I still reach sometimes.

Old habits knock

before I can stop them.

Some days I walk straight.

Some days I wander.

Some days I dance for no reason at all.

If you call, I will come laughing.

If you remain silent, I will still move.

The path is beginning to feel like prayer.

What left did not ruin me.

It made space.

And space, it turns out, can breathe.

I am still confused.

Still asking.

Still human.

But somewhere between doubt and wonder,

between losing and letting go,

hope keeps walking beside me

like it knows the way.

And maybe peace is not an arrival.

Maybe it is this,

walking, asking, stumbling, smiling,

and feeling something vast

walking beside me

as if it always had.

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Author’s Note

This piece is not about a person, and it is not an expression of religious devotion. It emerged from sitting with distance, uncertainty, and the quiet that appears when you stop resisting where you are.

Lately, I have been wondering whether peace arrives through answers or through learning to live with the questions. This poem belongs to that in between space, not lost, not certain, still moving. If it feels intimate, it is because the journey inward often does.