26 April 2025
"Fifty-Three Sunsets"
Today,
the wind carries no candles,
no familiar voices calling out my name.
Just the hush of the boulevard
and the sun—
slowly bowing out of the day
like an old friend who knows when to leave quietly.
Fifty-three times the earth has circled the sun for me.
And here I am—
not at home,
but somehow, more at home
in the silence,
in the burning horizon,
in the sacred hush between what was and what might be.
I do not count the years anymore.
I count the courage it took to survive them.
I count the mornings I chose to rise
even when nothing called me beautiful.
But today, I will.
Today, I call myself beautiful—
Not for the way I look in the golden light,
but for all the times I kept going
when I could have faded
with the sun.
