The Inward Journey
Written: July 6, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Nayda Ivette Negron Flores
An inward journey is not a road
but a **return** —
a slow aurora rising behind the sky,
a hush where the heart begins
to hear itself again.
It is the moment you stop
careening through the world’s clamor
and feel the subtle susurrus
of your own becoming.
It is a lantern lifted
in the labyrinthine dark,
revealing not monsters
but mirrors —
each one a mythic reminder
of who you were
before the world
told you otherwise.
It is the quiet courage
to clear the noise,
to sift the ash from the ember,
to find the single, ductile thread
that still thrums with truth.
It is the place where your pulse
finally speaks without fear,
where your spirit, long beleaguered,
stands up again
after falling seven.
Embrace the journey
that doesn’t invite you to shift
into someone else —
it calls you to recognize and reclaim
the luminous self
you have always been.
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