The Hunt for Self

I’ve hunted myself across years,

through reflections that refused to speak,

through poems I mistook for mirrors.

Each version of me

leaves tracks in different soil

the child’s, the skeptic’s, the survivor’s.

I followed them all

until the paths tangled,

and I stood at the center,

surrounded by my own footprints.

There was no quarry

only the echo of breath,

the hunter and hunted

the same pulse in the same dark.

When I finally stopped asking,

a sound like wings stirred in the sand.

Not proof

but presence.

And I fell to my knees,

not because I found,

but because I was found.