Prism — A Poem About Light Breaking Through
There are days when it feels like the light will never find its way back in — when every color has dulled, and the world seems made only of greys. I wrote Prism on one of those mornings, staring at a window where the first thin beam of sunlight met the glass and refracted into sudden, impossible color. It was a reminder that even through fracture, beauty is born. We spend so much of our lives trying not to break. But sometimes, the cracks are the only way light can enter. Prism is about that moment — the one where you stop resisting and let illumination happen. It’s about how transformation isn’t always gentle; sometimes it arrives like fire, turning what was rigid into something radiant. When I wrote the line, “What hid in shadow now unfolds its wings,” I wasn’t just speaking of light. I was thinking of all the selves we bury — the ones we silence to survive. The poem became a way of calling them back, of saying: come home. Rise through the cracks. Sing again. As the poem unfolds, it moves from silence to song, from confinement to freedom. Each stanza climbs a little higher, like a spiral staircase made of flame. That image came to me from the feeling of renewal — not sudden, not perfect, but ongoing. Healing, I’ve learned, is not a return to what was; it’s the birth of what’s next.“There is a word for this: to come alive, to feel the blood remember how to race, when everything you thought would not survive returns with wonder written on its face.”That, to me, is the core of the poem — the miracle of rediscovery. To “come alive” is not to forget pain, but to integrate it into the greater music of who we are. Every fracture reflects something new. Every wound becomes a window. Prism isn’t a poem of despair or triumph, but of awakening. It’s an invitation to open, to let the light find you, even if you’re not ready. The moment you stop resisting the dawn, you realize — it’s already inside you, waiting to break through. Maybe that’s what poetry really is: light remembered through words. A way to catch the shimmer before it fades. Tell me — what light has returned to you lately? Read the full poem and analysis tomorrow 29.10.2025: https://alkonda.com/2025/10/29/the-poem-of-the-day-17/
© Al Konda · The Poetry Elite