Esmere Vell

My shame is ever before me—
a shadow stretched across the floor
of every room I enter,
every morning I wake into.

I am surrounded.
I tread water in a sea of regret
and call it living,
though sometimes I hardly recognize
the life beneath my name.

This is not the life I imagined.
Not the bright, wide vision
I once held for adulthood—
not the place my younger heart
thought it was walking toward.

There are still meaningful moments:
a voice I love,
a kindness exchanged,
a hand reaching for mine.
I care for the people around me.
I know they matter.
I know, at times, the work matters too.

But meaning is not always desire.
Goodness is not always joy.
And I cannot always find the wanting
inside the things I am required to do.

I feel chained to schedules,
to tasks that return tomorrow,
to jobs that ask and ask again.
A servant of the life I built
or perhaps the life that built itself
while I was trying only to survive.

Some days I can see its goodness
like sunlight behind heavy clouds.
Some days I cannot feel it at all.

And still I ask:

Is this what I am meant for?
Is this where I belong?
Was freedom only a word
I carried when I was young?
Was hope a door that closed behind me?
Was dreaming something meant
for another version of me?

Or will freedom return—
not as escape alone,
but as breath?

Will hope find its way back
into the ordinary hours?
Will dream rise again,
quietly at first,
like dawn entering a room
I thought would remain dark?

I do not know.

But perhaps the fact that I still ask
means some part of me
has not surrendered.

Perhaps beneath the regret,
beneath the shame,
beneath the life I do not recognize,
there is still a living thing
turning its face toward light.

Esmere Vell

Author Archives: Esmere Vell

Reflection: “Ever Before Me”