You understand me, O tender soul,
Who walks through shadowed halls
Where echoes of your former self still weep

You carry scars like autumn's gentle calls
Each wound a seed that slumbers buried deep
How beautiful this melancholy dance

Of shedding skin you've outgrown through the years,
Though bittersweet, the backward longing glance
at where you were, dissolves in grateful tears.

The mirror shows a stranger's knowing eyes
Where simplicity once dwelt in younger days, 
Yet wisdom blooms where innocence dies
Like flowers pushing through forgotten graves.

O growth, you are a river running slow, 
Carving canyons where the heart learns to grow.
Each layer reveals what we were meant to know;
That breaking is how wounded vessels glow.

The person that you left behind still calls,
From photographs and memories grown dim,
The ghost that haunts these newly painted walls,
While you become the song you used to hum. 



By Diane E. Dockum
©April 17, 2026