After Innocence is lost

There is a quiet, irreversible shift when innocence slips away and something older, heavier and more knowing takes its place.

After innocence is gone,

does the world darken ***

or does it it sharpen.

Edges you once mistook for petals

reveal themselves as blades,

and even the wind seems to speak

in a language you were never taught

but somehow already understand.

***

After innocence is gone,

your footsteps sound different.

Heavier, perhaps,

or simply more deliberate ***

as if the earth has begun

to take you seriously.

***

You start noticing the seams in things:

the way trust has a hinge,

the way laughter sometimes hides a hurt,

the way people say 'always'---

when they mean 'until it stops hurting'.

***

And yet ---

there is a strange beauty in this new sight.

Not the soft beauty of unknowing,

but the fierce, luminous kind

that comes from seeing the world

without its disguises

and choosing to walk through it anyway.

***

After innocence is gone,

you do not become less.

You become layered.

You become weathered.

You become the kind of person

who can hold both the wound

and the wisdom it left behind.

***

And if you listen closely,

you may even hear it ---

the faint echo of who you were...

because you were never lost,

just folded into who you are becoming.