When I Awaken Poem by Mystic Qalandar

When I awaken—
it feels
as though my soul
is breathing
beneath the rubble of its own existence.
Somewhere under the ruins,
a buried fire still lives,
faint as an ember
beneath winter ash.

I descend into an ancient war
against myself;
a war in which I am
both the soldier
and the slain.
The blade,
the wound,
the trembling hand that delivers it—
all belong to me.

The ghosts of the past,
draped in the dust of silence,
gather around me.
Their footsteps echo
through abandoned corridors of memory,
and the centuries-old exhaustion
of body and spirit
begins its slow descent
into the dark well of the heart.

When I awaken—
some unnamed longing within me
spreads its wings.
I cannot tell
whether it comes
to destroy me
or to create me anew.

Yet something trembles
in the hidden marrow of existence,
as though deep within the unseen universe
a sealed door
is beginning to crack open.

Perhaps a new dawn
is rising
on the horizon of the soul,
its first pale light
touching the edges of my darkness.

Or perhaps
some nameless night
stands waiting at the threshold,
patient as death,
ready to swallow
what remains of my consciousness.

Still—
at the end of an invisible corridor
I see
a trembling ray of light,
thin as a thread
passing through a ruined sanctuary.

I do not know
whether I will reach that luminance,
or whether the shadows along the way
will draw me into themselves.

Will I dissolve
in the gravity of divine truth,
like salt vanishing into the sea?
Or will I scatter once more
beneath the tyranny
of the ego's darkest hunger?

When I awaken—
the demons of my inner world
begin forging chains
around my soul.
Their iron hands
move soundlessly in the dark.

My life,
my mind,
my breath—
all of it
begins to drown
in the frozen river of time.

The clocks continue ticking
in empty rooms.
Dust gathers
on forgotten windowsills.
Outside,
the world keeps speaking
in a language of noise
that no longer reaches me.

Then somewhere—
light descends.

Silent.
Sacred.
Ancient beyond
It enters without footsteps.
No doors open, yet suddenly
it is there.

It gathers me into its stillness,
pouring into my being
the warmth of its mercy,
the fire of its wisdom,
the unbearable tenderness
of its love.

Then it carries me
to a place where, perhaps,
my soul remembers for the first time
its true homeland.

There, something within me loosens.
The knots of years
begin quietly to untie themselves.

The light enfolds me
in the warmth of its embrace
and sings a melody
that ears cannot hear—
only the soul can recognize.

When I awaken,
I no longer merely live;
I enter a silent awareness.

Idle thoughts,
hollow conversations,
the endless machinery of noise—
all lose their hold on me.

Those unaware of my condition
assume that perhaps I have been drinking,
or that I have abandoned the world.

Yet sometimes
a person reaches a place
where nothing remains to be said
except that silence
which is truer than words.

For words too often
are footprints on water.
They vanish even as they are formed.

And when I fall silent—
perhaps a tumultuous life reaches its end:
a life overflowing with language
yet starving for meaning.

This world, this internet,
these servers humming in the dark,
these endless digital memories—
one day all of them
will be surrendered to oblivion.

Photographs will fade.
Names will disappear from mouths.
Entire lives will collapse
into unread archives of dust.

A person travels
from memory into the past,
from the past into forgetting,
from forgetting into erasure.

Yet primordial remembrance—
that hidden truth beneath all things—
draws the soul out of annihilation
and acquaints it with the touch of eternity.

Leave your imprint only there
where time itself kneels before the eternal.

And when I fall silent,
the screaming voices within me
begin, slowly, to recede.

If you could witness my peace,
if you could enter the stillness of my inner world,
perhaps your eyes would fill with tears,
and you too would step into that ocean of love
where drowning is salvation.

Then a wonder occurs.

That light, that awareness, that sacred melody
are no longer merely light, awareness, or melody.

They become a mirror.

And within it
I behold myself unveiled for the first time,
stripped of every borrowed name.

There, the one who sees
and the one who is seen
become one.

I and my Creator,
the lover and the beloved,
the drop and the ocean—
all separations collapse into a single point
and disappear.

No distance remains.
No veil remains.
Even the word 'I'
begins to dissolve
like mist before morning light.

This is the place
where no questions arise,
where seeking itself comes to an end.

And in the vastness of that silence,
only one
Only one eternal now remains—
where there is no fear, no desire,
no beginning, no end;

only a boundless oneness
flowing silently through all things.

And there, at the source of all melodies,
I hear that final silence
in which the whole universe
grows faint like a whisper—

and then, it too,
falls silent.

---

— MyKoul