Alone was my tribute—
a quiet offering laid at the altar of my own becoming.
In the stillness, I found a mirror not made of glass
but of breath, of silence, of the soft echo of my own name.
I fell in love with myself there,
not suddenly, but like dawn learning the horizon—
slow, patient, inevitable.
Picture yourself in that fragile disbelief,
where life stands before you like a cathedral of moments,
vast and listening,
as if the grand design of living had always known you.
It began with something small—
a nearly invisible incision in the fabric of certainty.
So slight it could have been mistaken for nothing,
yet deep enough to loosen the walls of everything.
And the world within me collapsed,
not in ruin, but in revelation.
Pain became the doorway,
solitude the witness,
and silence the language I finally understood.
So I stood there, alone—
not abandoned, but crowned by my own presence.
For alone was never emptiness.
Alone was my tribute,
and in its sacred quiet
I fell endlessly in love with myself.
Letters from Xhale the magazine Words that breathe. Stories that Linger, 