There was a time when I lived in compartments—peace in one hand, war in the other. My days were measured by the sun’s rise and fall, my seasons by the tilt of the earth. Silence was my refuge, pain my companion, and death a distant shadow I dared not name.

Then love arrived—not gently, not politely. It came like a tempest, ravenous and relentless. It consumed everything: my certainties, my contradictions, my quiet corners. It devoured my winter’s frost and my summer’s blaze, my sleepless nights and my tranquil dawns. Even my fear—so carefully preserved—was swallowed whole.

Yet in this devouring, love did not destroy. It transfigured.

I wandered through the ruins of who I had been, expecting emptiness. Instead, I found echoes—soft, resilient, reborn. My pain had changed its voice; it no longer screamed, it sang. My fears, once sharp and jagged, now shimmered like distant stars—present, but no longer piercing.

Time itself bent to love’s rhythm. No longer a straight line, it became a river, winding and infinite. I floated through moments that pulsed with stillness and surged with motion. The seasons blurred—spring bloomed in winter’s breath, summer warmed the bones of autumn. Everything coexisted. Everything belonged.

Love had erased my boundaries, but not my self. It opened me like a window to the world. My heart, once guarded, now overflowed. The silence that once echoed with solitude now hummed with connection—gentle, intricate, alive.

And so I walked—not away from the fire, but through it. I emerged not burned, but illuminated. Love had consumed me, yes. But in its hunger, it had gifted me a new form: a soul unshackled, a life unmeasured, a heart that beat not for survival, but for wonder.

I am no longer the person I was. I am the aftermath of love’s embrace. And in that embrace, I found not an ending—but a beginning. 🙏🏾❤️

©️ Beatriz Esmer