The Inner Landscape

Even though I haven’t traveled far,
I have gone to many places.
Do not be fooled by the confines of my body--
I’ve seen realms beyond its reach,
for the journey I speak of
lives deep within the psyche,
the kind you can’t return from,
the kind that smears its fingerprint
across the window of the soul.

The mountains I climb cannot be touched--
only felt, like the hairs that rise after a shiver,
or the breath held
between reaction and action.

I may not have traveled far,
but I have gone farther than most--
on a journey of the mind,
unseen, unrationalized,
yet the most profound voyage
any soul can undertake.

I’ve abandoned the tight scarf of the body’s embrace,
a shaman shapeshifting in the cracks of existence,
seeking happiness,
Anger,
Sadness--
every fleeting emotion,
as transient as the moment
of traveling from place to place.

Now that I find myself
in this liminal space,
I am not sure where to go.
I can go anywhere--
and still arrive nowhere.
Perhaps the only way
to become who I am meant to be
is to stand still.

I cannot find myself out there--
amidst the distractions
that will only slice me
further from myself.
What I am looking for
cannot be seen.
It is futile
to think otherwise.

And so, in this moment
where everything
and nothing
makes sense--
where time and place
do not exist--
I surrender.
I do not have to go anywhere
to prove that I existed.
​
I have arrived
not having left.