Square One
The clean slate gleams, almost blinding.
A stark white canvas where vibrant hues once clashed,
or perhaps faded into a tired monochrome.
No comforting smudges of the past remain,
no familiar landmarks to orient the gaze.
There's a strange liberation in this emptiness,
a shedding of accumulated weight,
the heavy cloak of expectation,
the tangled threads of what should have been.
But the air is thin, unfamiliar.
The muscles of habit have atrophied.
Each step forward feels tentative,
a newborn's unsteady gait on an unmapped floor.
The knowledge remains, a ghost in the machine,
whispering of paths already trod,
of lessons learned and mistakes etched in memory.
Yet, the application feels foreign,
the context utterly new.
Is this failure, stripped bare?
Or a brutal act of grace,
a forced reset, a chance to rebuild
with a wisdom hard-won,
unburdened by the blueprints of yesterday?
The potential hums, a low thrum beneath the silence.
Any direction is possible.
Any shape can be sculpted from this void.
But the inertia is a heavy blanket,
the echo of the past a persistent whisper,
tempting a return to familiar, even flawed, ground.
The question hangs in the stark white air:
will the new beginning truly be new,
or will the old patterns, like stubborn weeds,
inevitably sprout again in this seemingly barren soil?
The answer lies in the trembling first step,
taken into the vast, uncertain expanse of square one.
©bfa0422325
Copyright ©
Bernard F. Asuncion
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