The Weight of Shackles

I wandered through alleyways of my own making,

sleek distractions dressed in borrowed light,

mistaking attention for affection,

mistaking noise for peace.



I searched for validation

in hands that never knew how to hold me,

in rooms full of faces

that forgot my name by morning,

in empty promises wrapped beautifully enough

to almost feel like love.



But emptiness has a language of its own.



It echoed through me

in quiet hours no one stayed to witness,

when the mirrors became harder to look at,

and even my reflection seemed unsure

of who I had become.



I wore shame like shackles,

cold around the ankles of my spirit,

dragging them through years of repetition—

same wounds, different names,

same ache, different disguises.



Round and round I went,

circling old roads in silent defiance,

hoping somehow the ending would change

while planting my roots

in the same starving soil.



I reached for fruit

from branches that never nourished me,

fed myself distraction

and wondered why my soul still ached.



There were nights

I wanted freedom so badly

I could taste it somewhere beyond the horizon—

yet didn’t know how to loosen the chains

I had learned to call familiar.



And somewhere inside the breaking,

inside prayers spoken more like exhaustion than faith,

God met me.



Not with thunder.

Not with condemnation.



But gently—

like dawn slipping through torn curtains,

like melodies returning

to a house abandoned by joy.



He showed me the doors

I had mistaken for walls.



And the shackles?

He broke what I thought would bury me.



The same hands

I once stretched toward empty things

began reaching toward heaven instead.

What grew after that

felt unfamiliar at first—

peace.



Like blossoms after a cruel winter,

like sunlight learning my name,

like breathing without fear

of what tomorrow might take.



Now the road bends toward new horizons,

and I walk lighter than I ever thought possible.



Not because life stopped hurting—

but because I no longer walk it alone.



The chains that once named me

lie broken behind me,



and somewhere ahead,

joy sings softly through the trees—



a melody

I finally know belongs to me.