Words From Another World
I wrote in her journal - so impolite that I crossed a line,
And I ask for forgiveness for words that weren't mine.
For the first time my pen did not follow my will,
It moved with a presence both distant and still.
Not a voice I could hear, not a thought I could claim,
But something within me that wrote just the same.
Fear was the whisper that fractured my mind,
Fear was the staircase with no end to find.
Fear was the loss of love that I couldn't hold,
Fear was division from One into the cold.
It dressed as a teacher, persuasive and near,
Yet all that it offered was more of itself, fear.
It reached out to guide me, yet pulled me apart,
A louder illusion that hardened my heart.
Forgive me, O Father, for all I have sinned,
Not only in action, but thought and within.
I say it not out of a fear of your hand,
But something in me that still longs to understand.
I never have broken a body by force,
But I have crossed minds without care or remorse.
The shadow I feared wore a stranger's disguise,
Yet I lived in the corners behind my own eyes.
I built up a shelter with violence and lust,
I called it protection, I named it my trust.
I feared the light that would loosen my frame,
So I stayed in the shadow and fed it my name.
Then came a still courage that asked me to stay,
Not loud like a force, but it would not give way.
It loosened the weight I had worn like a skin,
Like something forgave me before I gave in.
It took my shame off like some old clothes,
And I was no longer the same while fully exposed.
Peace is not distant, nor something to find,
Peace is a movement that lives in the mind.
You will not find it by reaching afar,
It waits in the stillness of who you are.
We move even when we are circling ground,
We grow even when love cannot yet be found.
I am the one who walked when you could not see,
My faith held you closer than you knew to be.
Your love is a song I carry each day,
No matter the distance, it will not decay.
If God has a place where I start to begin,
It lives in the quiet that echoes within.
Not distant, not separate, not something above,
But closer than thought, something steady as love.
Zhen Bin Pan
2026
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