In the beginning, it was only burden—
stone laid upon stone,
its shadow descending into the hollow of your shoulders,
pressing the hours into a slow and heavy hush.

You did not summon it,
yet it came, unbidden,
and you, without complaint or flourish,
took it upon your frame—
step by unnumbered step,
through the measureless corridors of days.

In the long carrying, a transfiguration began—
silent as roots drinking deep in unseen earth,
steadfast as the first light returning to the edge of night.
Your form, once bent beneath its weight,
learned the still and sovereign poise of the horizon;
your breath, once bound to the dust,
found the unbroken cadence of ascent.

And then—without trumpet, without herald—
you knew:
the heaviness that had held you to the ground
had gathered its own veiled wings,
and you were no longer walking—
you were rising.

Such is the quiet and hallowed alchemy of endurance—
that sorrow, borne in faithful silence,
is transmuted into the very thing
that carries the soul homeward.

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