I did not choose the wind or flame, Nor exile’s silence, nor its name. The road was long, the nights were wide, And home was something kept inside. The borders shifted, time grew thin, I carried loss beneath my skin. The papers stamped, the questions told, But none could weigh what grief would hold. I prayed in rooms that had no light, I wrote through hunger, wrote through fright. The verses came like falling snow, Soft truths that only silence knows. I learned to speak in borrowed tones, To build a life from scattered stones. The faith I kept was not for show, It burned beneath where no one’d know.