In the desert, the wind doesn’t ask questions. 
It just moves, carving silence into the dunes 
like it’s always been allowed to be loud, 
even when it says nothing. 

​

I walked far enough 
to lose the glow of camp, 
sat down where the earth 
no longer felt borrowed, 
and let the sand bury my feet.

 

It was then I remembered what it felt like to be alone. 
Alone and not afraid. 
Not watched. 
Not measured. 
Not waiting for someone to ruin the moment with one sharp quip. 

​

I looked up, and the sky was a thousand small escapes, 
stars peeling back the dark 
as if they knew I needed proof 
that beauty exists in things that stay far away from life. 

​

When I was a child, 
solitude wasn’t a choice. 
It was a room I lived in without walls, 
just the feeling of being 
someone no one wanted to be around. 
So I learned to love it. 
I made it mine. 

​

Silence became my friend 
because the voices near me were weapons. 
Solitude became my freedom, because people were cages, 
that kept changing their locks. 

In the desert, no one told me I was too much 
or not enough. 

​

And it hurt to feel that joy 
in being alone, to realize it came 
not from peace but from practice. 
From years of pretending I liked the quiet 
when it was really the only thing 
that didn’t yell back. 

​

Still, that night, with my scarf pressed over my hair 
and the sand, cold under my palms, 
I smiled.  

​

Because maybe freedom doesn’t always come from healing. 
Maybe it comes from finally recognizing the parts of yourself 
that survived before you had the language 
to name them. 

​

And in the red silence of the Sahara, 
I gave them names, and I called them mine.