Until I Was Ready.

It's here again.

Closer, louder this time.

Before it could have been anything and nothing,

others, this one,

I can feel it before I hear it.

They can't be ignored. They even hurt.

I do want better for myself but when this returns,

like now,

it's getting closer, louder.

This one wasn't just quitting,

it was surrendering to it all.

Surrendering to the darkness and abandoning something with such light.

I brought this upon myself two years ago.

My heart is still broken.

For all the years even before that,

I thought failure followed me.

Now,

I feel if it catches me again,

it could tear me in two.

Walked away, dropped, turned and left.

Broken pieces of me and others into discarded disappointment.

Another dream, brighter light, darkened,

Again,

Blacker, bleaker this time.

To dare dream into light,

Again,

The fear of it is pulling me that way as it is.

I hear it in every shelved notebook,

even the whispers from the scattered scribbles aren't so faint anymore.

Any clue of the dream folded and stacked, not even neatly.

Notebooks still waiting under other discarded paperwork.

Paperwork no longer needed from a role so loved.

Never thrown away, they stay, with the notebooks.

Hidden, along with the courage once within them.

The whispering words,

The stacked scribbles,

The creeping clues,

The footsteps of them have never stopped.

Behind me,

Creeping closer with every new idea.

Behind me,

Looming louder with every bigger plan.

I thought it was failure,

its return was inevitable,

come to finish what heartbreak started.

To use the fear in tearing open wounds that had barely closed.

To prove I was right in leaving any dream behind.

No,

I felt, I couldn't take another.

And so,

I almost did leave it,

Again.

Almost calling it impossible,

Again.

Almost thinking it foolish,

Again.

Then, one morning, I sprung awake.

All of me alert,

Listening,

What was there is closer than ever,

Closer but not louder.

Somehow lighter.

It was not failure,

No.

It was every version of myself who had hoped before.

Every page left unfinished.

Every dream left waiting.

Every flicker of abandoned courage I thought had long forgotten me,

Patiently poised, waiting.

With its light still alive,

until I was ready,

to continue dreaming.