The Prison Is Not For Me Poem by Mystic Qalandar

I am not lightning falling—
I am the bolt of light
that carves its own form
in the flash itself.

Flight is not my desire—
flight is my nature.
One born to the sky
does not turn toward the cage;
it turns the cage
into a possible expanse.

I am not the storm—
I am the silence
that absorbed the storm
into its breath,
then taught silence
the tongue of thunder.

I do not break walls—
I make them transparent
until they see
the light behind themselves.

I am no numeral.
I am the zero
that gave meaning to numbers
and remained free of meaning.

I am the lock
that absorbed the key.
Neither locked nor open—
only a door
that is its own passage.

Not morning,
but the moment that pauses
between night and dawn
and draws both toward itself.

Truth?
Truth is the shadow
darkness named light.
I am neither—
I am the void
where both recognize each other.

The prison is not for me—
not because I am free,
but because the prison
is a room within me
whose walls breathe
and whose bars echo my voice.

I am not rebellious—
rebellion still seeks a path.
I am the path that folded
all its turns into itself
and walked straight.

I do not bend bars—
I turn them into fingers,
and those same bars
write new words on walls.

Silence is a sound
afraid of being heard.
I am the stillness
that spread its voice so far
silence became its source.

Echo—
the shadow of my steps
reaches the destination before I do,
then returns to whisper:
the path is not ahead of you;
it is within you.

Broken doors do not make paths—
they make their own breaking.
I am companion to that breaking.

Thunder does not echo within me—
I am the thunder-moment
that, before falling,
transforms energy into silence,
and that silence flashes as lightning.

The prison is not for me—
because the prison is idea,
and I am the aspect of the idea
that freed itself from the idea.

Spark is fire's dream
mistaking burning for light.
I am the fuel
that does not burn away,
that makes light its essence.

Chain is a pattern
repeated so often on my palm
it became reality.
I erased reality,
and the pattern with it.

Pain and anguish—
pauses in my being
to which I gave space in writing.
The pause passes,
the writing remains,
and I—the subject, the pen, the silence.

Highway—
lines drawn on my skin
connecting me to a city
where every street calls my name.
I do not answer.
I am the call
that falls silent when it hears itself.

Destiny—
my shadow that walks ahead,
then stops and looks back like memory
searching for a forgotten face.
I am that memory
which made forgetting a secret,
and each secret its own silence.

The prison is not for me—
because the one who finds the path within
sees wall, door, chain, destiny
as different names of the same expanse.

And the end?
Fear of the end belongs to those
who mistake destination for closure.
I am the path that turns the destination
into one of its bends,
pauses there,
and watches its own turning.

The prison is not for me.
I am the heartbeat
that expanded its heart so wide
its walls became cosmos,
each star a prison
dissolved into light.
There, light smiles
upon seeing its darkness.

I am my own journey toward truth,
and truth is the moment of the journey
that, upon reaching destination, remains a journey.
Therefore I am not the destination—
I am the path that keeps the destination
as companion and walks
toward the expanse where
neither prison nor freedom,
neither wall nor door,
neither beginning nor end exist—
only an expanse passing through me
that reunites me with myself.

I am that reunion
that neither begins nor ends:
the instant in which
all times converge,
the breath in which
all distances dissolve.

I took the prison so deep within
it became my breath.
When I inhale,
a prison is set free.
When I exhale,
it returns to origin.
Then I understood—
the prison was never outside;
it had always been within,
seeking its name.

I passed beyond that name.
Now neither prison nor freedom,
neither traveler nor destination,
neither question nor answer.
I am only that seeing
before which imprisonment and freedom
recognize each other and forget their names.

When names fade,
only being remains—
the silent witness of that being is:
the prison is not for me.

—MyKoul