Wonders, I say

There are days awareness arrives like sunlight after rain,

touching skin that forgot what warmth feels like.

And in that stillness,

I realize balance is not perfection

but the peace that remains when nothing is certain.

I have never been the loud one.

I move softly through rooms,

not to hide, but to listen.

Silence, to me, is not emptiness.

It is a form of knowing,

a way of hearing what the world rushes past.

To be quiet and aware

is its own kind of courage.

It says I will not be hurried into proving my existence.

There is something almost divine about feeling whole without applause,

about meeting your solitude and finding it tender.

That, I’ve learned,

is freedom.

The kind that hums under your skin,

the kind that lets you exist without needing permission.

My childhood built a strong shell.

It taught me how to survive storms before I ever learned how to dance in them.

But somewhere along the way,

I began teaching myself softness.

The child and the woman now sit side by side within me,

not enemies, not strangers,

just two forms of the same courage.

Balance is not about standing still.

It is about swaying and still calling it grace.

When I say I flow with the wind,

I do not mean I am lost.

I mean I have learned to move with trust,

to find direction inside surrender.

Flowing is not drifting.

It is the quiet faith that the current knows where to take you.

Certainty may escape me,

but awareness stays.

It stays like breath,

like prayer,

like the small truth that grows when you finally stop forcing clarity.

Wonders, I say,

how awareness feels like rebirth,

how stillness hums for story.

And I wonder too,

as you read these words,

if you have ever stood where I am standing.

Half in healing, half in awe,

not searching for balance,

but realizing you already are it.

A Small Conversation with Myself

I think I understand it now.

This awareness I keep talking about.

I can simply enjoy the truth of what I am seeing,

the sweetness of it all,

the shape it takes,

and the moment it melts.

Balance is that simple, really.

It is when you stop choosing what must please you,

and start allowing yourself to feel what already does.

-Nnenna