By Sakthe M
Before we spoke at all, before we knew our name,
we came swaddled in darkness, glowing with quiet light.
No dreams yet-only heat.
Breath on breath, small hands grasping for sense.
Our souls sang, I am here,
far before we understood what “being” was.
Can the soul dream before the soul learns to yearn?
We communicated with clouds, we believed in stars.
The world curved to our wonder-
not because we dominated it,
but because we believed.
Tears rained like summer showers,
laughter rolled like thunder.
If once we believed in anything being possible-
what unwrapped that holy certainty from our hands?
At five, six, seven to nine,
we painted futures with sidewalk chalk, bright and bold.
Cardboard was kingdoms.
Scissors weren’t toys-they were changing.
We weren’t playing; we were practicing becoming.
Doubt slipped in, stealthy
but nonetheless we ran arms extended pursuing the sun.
If children color their dreams with crayon,
why do we subsequently exchange them for grayer realities?
At ten to thirteen, we faced inward.
We looked up at the sky from the ground
and down at the page with truths too raw to tell.
We wrote what we could not say,
watched our images change in the quiet questions of the mirror.
And something within whispered: Wait. More.
Don’t the deepest roots take hold in silence,
hidden beneath the bloom?
From fourteen to eighteen-we burned.
Wild, breakable, alive.
We lived amorously, shattered loudly,
revolted not to destroy but to discover ourselves in the wreckage.
We pleaded with the world to notice us-
not for glory, but for assurance that we existed.
When our fire was pain and potential,
weren’t we simply requesting to be restored?
In our twenties, we came into the world
with calloused hands and shaking hearts.
Reality broke us open-then gave us bricks.
We constructed dreams out of silence,
paid rent in hope and sleepless nights.
Each failure inscribed a verse in the hymn of becoming.
Isn’t the dream closest to truth
constructed of blistered hands and unbent belief?
At thirty and forty, the flame grew deeper.
It heated others, and gradually us as well.
Ambition shifted to purpose.
We hung on. We held. We loved despite exhaustion.
Our aspirations hushed, but not away.
When the flame warms others first
before it returns to you-
isn’t that the holiest form of greatness?
By forty, fifty, and sixty,
we looked inward once more-not in regret, but awe.
We mourned the unlived,
but blessed the lived.
We no longer ran after applause-only truth.
And if we sit with our shadows and yet still smile,
haven’t we kissed the holy face of peace?
In our seventies and onwards,
we became guardians of story, beacons of stillness.
Our step slowed; our eyes became keen.
We rocked sunrise with weathered hands,
carried legacies like fragile fire.
Our presence became a tongue.
When you are the candle lit by others,
have you not become the dream achieved?
And then-eighty, ninety, beyond-
we relinquished, not life,
but proving.
We did not disappear-we transmuted.
Our hands fell still,
but our fingerprints remained-
on lullabies, on laughter, on lives touched.
If love lingers in our absence,
did we ever really leave?
And after breath, after name-
the fire stays.
It takes hands to shaking hands,
a story told, a lesson learned.
We are not lost.
We are the dawn of every new breath.
So ask yourself now-
when it is your turn to carry the fire,
will you rise
with the dream that never dies?
This is not merely our life story.
It is our legacy.
Our fire.
Our forever.
Let it burn-
for those who preceded us,
and those yet to dream.