The Stranger at the table

I used to walk through days that felt my own,
where mornings came with weight I understood,
where every choice I made was carved in stone,
and life moved forward, quietly, as it should.

But years have bent the road I thought I knew,
and left me standing where two pathways meet,
with faces in the distance, blurred and few,
and hours full of questions, incomplete.

Yet maybe this is where the living starts —
not in the knowing, but the open hand,
not in the certainty of mapped-out charts,
but learning how to walk on shifting sand.

The future waits, a stranger, calm and still.
Perhaps I'll trust it. Perhaps, in time, I will.