Threads of soul

In the hush of a twilight glade,
a turtle met a firefly.
The air was thick with quiet questions.
The stars had just begun to try.

“I feel like I don’t know myself,”
the turtle said, his voice a sigh.
“I’ve worn so many shells for others,
I forget the one that’s mine.”

The firefly lit up the dusk,
a flicker warm and small.
“We all lose pieces on the road—
some heavy, some quite small.”

“But in the dark, we start to see
what light we’ve kept inside.
You’re not becoming something else—
you’re just no longer trying to hide.”

The turtle blinked, then slowly smiled,
his shell not heavy now.
“Perhaps I’ve always been enough—
just didn’t know quite how.”

And so they sat beneath the trees,
one glowing, one still slow—
both knowing that the path within
is the longest one we go…