Progress

‘Mother, I’m scared,

The incessant ticking of time.

On and on, never stopping.

Will it stop for me?’

‘One day son,

But not yet.

You’ve done that once before

Yet proved it wrong.’

‘How was that mother?’

‘You came back, and are still coming.’

‘I have no memory of that,

Yet can feel the return.

Day by day, more & more,

little by little, I can see the changes.

First I talk, then I walk, now I run.

But remembering still I struggle with.’

‘Yes son, but believe me that will come,

All else has’

2015

By Benedict Cadwallader from The Journey

Homing

May I find my way?

This wandering life,

in which I can only

wander, hoping to move on,

move on to new,

Move on to better?

But only to move.

How many more times?

How many more times,

must I start, only to 

find myself lost?

Lost within everywhere,

lost within nowhere,

but lost nonetheless.

I can only wish to come

to somewhere new,

to somewhere calm,

and somewhere

Home.

2021

By Benedict Cadwallader from The Journey

A Quiet Rebellion

I have stood in the shadow of others,

Fingers stretched like roots,

Desperate to please, to bend,

Until my skin split like an overripe fruit.

They spoke in the language of their needs,

And I wore their wishes like a dress,

Too tight, too worn,

Until I could barely breathe beneath the seams.

But now, in the silence,

I gather my bones like fragments of forgotten dreams—

I piece them together with soft, steady hands,

Each scar a testament to the fire that once consumed me,

Now just a whisper in my throat.

Healing is not in the rush of light,

But in the slow, deliberate mending,

A quiet rebellion,

Refusing to bend to the weight of demands

That doesn't bear my name.

I am no longer the mirror of their desires,

No longer the ash to their flames.

Resilience is the space between my breaths,

The courage in the empty places I refuse to fill.

I am learning,

Slowly,

To be more than what they wanted me to be—

To be my own steady,

Bright,

Wild heart.

I rise, not for them,

But for me.

Sumayah Mittal is a young dedicated writer based in India, with a passion for exploring a variety of themes and emotional dynamics in her works.