The Whispered Verse

I thought I knew
how the world arranged itself,
neat stacks of truths,
bound by reason,
filed away in libraries
of certainty.

Then one afternoon
I listened to a story
in a voice
that did not sound like mine,
tasting syllables of worlds
my tongue had never shaped—
and slowly, the walls
I’d leaned against
began to tilt.

How fragile
are the borders
between knowing and being known,
how quickly
we defend the narrow paths
of our own small stories,
forgetting how large
the world stretches,
far beyond
our tidy fences.

Now,
when someone says
“this is truth,”
I look again,
peering gently through other eyes—
and find there
a different horizon,
a new way of seeing
that shifts softly beneath my feet
like sand.

I learn
to walk gently,
carrying questions
like precious stones,
holding carefully
the weight
of another’s lived life,
until every certainty dissolves
into something wider, kinder,
richer
than before.