TRAPPED IN OUR OWN LIGHT

We build our prisons from stories,

Brick by brick, year by year,

Each wound becoming a wall,

Each fear a locked door,

Until we can't remember

How we got here.

I know these walls intimately -

How they whisper of safety

While keeping love at bay,

How they promise protection

While stealing our breath,

How they feel like home

Until they become our tomb.

But here's what I learned

In the darkest corners

Of my self-made cell:

These walls are made of light,

These bars are made of grace,

Each story that trapped us

Is actually a door.

The key was always there,

Hidden in plain sight:

Not in changing the story,

But in remembering who's telling it.

Not in fighting the darkness,

But in recognizing ourselves

As the light we kept seeking.

Oh, how we run from room to room,

Searching for answers in achievements,

In substances, in others' eyes,

When all along, the heart knows -

These walls aren't even real,

They're projections of forgotten love,

Holograms of ancient pain.

The way out isn't out at all,

It's deeper in, through the center,

Where the storyteller sits

In naked vulnerability,

Where the heart beats its truth

Beyond all narratives,

Where love remembers itself.

So let the walls be teachers,

Let the prison show the way,

For in our deepest stuckness

Lives our greatest liberation.

Every pattern points home,

Every shadow holds light,

Every story leads to love.

Remember this, dear heart,

When the walls feel strongest:

You're not trapped in your story,

You're the power telling it.

You're not broken by your wounds,

You're the medicine they made.

You're not lost in darkness,

You're the light finding its way home.