Street Lights
A poem
Take me back to freshman year where I made a promise to my friend that I would lose myself.
Lose the girl that once was, break her apart and start new.
It was a heavy promise, and one I thankfully never fulfilled in the way it was meant to be (screw the toxicity of American college campus life).
It was traveling where I ultimately did lose myself. I’ve made wrong turns, walked backwards instead of forward, missed too many signs, misread north for south…but luckily, always arrived at my destination.
I was lost literally, but figuratively, I was finding what it meant to be human again. Traveling humbled me by exposing me to my privileges, stripping me of them to rely on myself and my surroundings only. With every new country, I found myself learning and relearning the roads of humanity. How to be more compassionate, how to trust openly and how to love the mind and body who would safeguard me through it all.
The road to finding myself again is was one where I have fallen, tripped and bruised myself. It was a dark road, but I’ve never lost sight of the little warmth of light ahead of me.
Today, I’m closer to it than I have been in a long time. ✨
I chase the lights.
They shimmer,
they dim,
they close.
I chase the lights.
They wander,
they seek,
they know.
I chase the lights.
Foreign roads,
unpaved,
untouched.
I chase the lights.
Lost, but unafraid,
lost, but not alone.
I am the light.
Today, I can be.
Tomorrow, I will be.
