This is the Shore

They have a word for this.

They think the wiring is wrong,

the mind drifting off its approved course.

They measure it against straight lines,

against clocks that tick in obedient rhythm,

against maps where every road

returns politely home,

but this does not return.

Instead, it turns inward,

like stepping into a forest at dusk,

when the light softens

and the world stops insisting on clarity.

A state where there is no noise,

No voice.

Only breath learning its own weight.

What they call losing balance

feels like being held.

The silence is not absence.

It is presence without noise,

when even your own name sounds unfamiliar.

The trees here are not trees

but thoughts grown wild,

untrimmed, unapproved.

They do not ask permission to exist.

They simply stand.

The air settles.

The pulse slows.

The edges of the self soften.

There is no right here,

no wrong,

no courtroom hidden in this darkness.

Nothing demands explanation.

Nothing asks to be proven.

Hunger forgets to knock.

Thirst dissolves before it forms.

Even the body stops demanding witness.

And the measures of the outer world,

validation, applause, apology, love,

have no weight here.

No one to impress.

No one to forgive.

No one to lean toward.

The dark does not clap.

It does not judge.

It does not care if you are whole or fractured.

Walk long enough

and the edges blur.

The explorer and the dark

begin to share the same pulse.

What they call instability

feels here like gravity.

What they call madness

feels like shedding a borrowed script.

No leash.

No audience.

No performance of sanity.

Just a deep, unlit stillness

where nothing is required

except being.

And in that unclaimed silence,

where even identity grows quiet,

there is a clarity so bare

it almost wounds.

Not broken.

Not lost.

Simply free,

and finally,

home.

©Chitra Arun