I Didn't Mean to Stay

I didn't mean to stay.

It started as an escape.
A blank page.
A pen.
A place to hide thoughts that spoke louder than people ever could.

I thought I was writing poems.
Turns out,
the poems were writing me.

Every line opened another door.
Every door led somewhere stranger.
Rooms I didn't know existed.
Hallways built from old memories.
Conversations with versions of myself I had forgotten were still alive.

I kept telling myself I'd leave after one more poem.
One more mystery.
One more question.
One more glimpse into whatever lived behind my eyes.

But my inner world doesn't end.
It expands.

Every answer gives birth to another question.
Every truth arrives wearing a disguise.

Sometimes it looks like God.
Sometimes it looks like grief.
Sometimes it looks like a child standing alone in a memory asking why the world became what it became.

And I follow.

Because that's what writers do.

We follow footprints nobody else can see.
We chase echoes through abandoned parts of ourselves.
We become archaeologists digging through emotional ruins hoping to find something still breathing beneath the dust.

People ask why I write so much.

As if there's somewhere else to go.

As if I could abandon a universe that keeps unfolding inside my skull.

A universe where silence speaks.
Where wounds become stories.
Where loneliness transforms into language.
Where pain changes shape until it becomes art.

I fell in love with poetry the way people fall in love with dangerous places.
Slowly.
Without realizing it.
Then all at once.

Now every poem feels like a map.

Not to the world outside—
but to the endless country within.

And maybe that's why I stay.

Not because I'm lost.
But because there are still too many mysteries left.
Too many locked doors.
Too many unanswered prayers.
Too many beautiful things hiding in the dark.

And if I leave now,
who will tell their stories?