the unburdening

The Unburdening

The past drifts by like a ghost,
a soft spectre made of memory’s dust.
It reaches out sometimes,
a phantom hand brushing the edge of now—
but it has no weight,
no claim,
no throne.
The future flickers like an illusion,
a lantern swung by imagination
in a corridor not yet built.
It glows, it dims, it shifts—
but it cannot wound,
cannot bind,
cannot demand.
Between these shadows
I stand breathing,
untouched by what was,
untroubled by what might be.
Here, in the steady pulse of the present,}
I find peace—
not the quiet of surrender,
but the clarity of seeing
what is real.
And in that seeing
comes liberation:
the gentle falling away
of every ghost that never meant harm,
every illusion that never held truth,
every story I no longer need to carry.
I walk forward lighter,
un-haunted,
un-afraid—
alive only in this moment,
where nothing is missing
and nothing is chasing me.

authored by co-pilot and me