To Stand at the Edge of the World

I was born
with a compass tucked behind my ribs,
its needle trembling
toward the place
where silence sharpens into splendour.

The Arctic—
not destination,
but devotion.
Not escape,
but arrival.

Where sky stretches
so wide and white
it unspools the edges of the self.
Where wind moves like cathedral bells,
and time slows to the pulse
of a planet holding its breath.

I ache for that solitude.
For the disciplined emptiness
of a world that makes no room
for excess or ego.
Where beauty is brutal,
and every flake of snow
is a sermon in restraint.

I long to kneel
on that frozen altar,
to bear witness
to God’s most impossible creatures.

The bear—
white as myth,
slow as certainty,
carved from patience and hunger
and the very marrow of survival.

To see her
rise from the shimmer,
bone and breath and divinity,
is to understand
that wonder does not need
permission.

It simply is.

And I—
small, warm, blinking—
will stand at the edge
of her world
and forget every name
I’ve ever answered to.

Because this—
this is the real beginning.
The wide, white hush
I have been waiting to enter.