Life jacket

The need for solid ground
      is the human condition.

A lost one switched sides
     found peace in religion

Though my story backtracks my heart barely beats different.

Just an unshackled mind - a small revolution.

I look back through a cracked lens
 
and see an old love affair.

She, my life jacket once filled with air.

     Now punctured, deflated
there are many replacements
     I must gracefully decline.
I swim ragged as ever.

At sea with a fresh introspection -
     dogma is dead;
I take a whiff of the freedom,
     and catch pride swell -
My gassed up faculty of reason,
     whispers that it was my achievement.

Shame,
     the epiphany not mine to claim.

I arrived at this place by tides of change.
Circumstances
                       surely
                                paved
                                          the
                                                way.

Long I was yoked on my travels,
     how did it all unravel?

No thunderbolt struck;
     eye did not blink unstuck.

The stories simply fell apart,
     piece by piece.
Underneath, naked premise lay exposed;
     over a seasons discontent,
fear and guilt
     dissolved slow.
As mighty erosion,
     realisation in motion
niggling doubt
     seeds sprout
from ploughed lines of enquiry.

Nose poked in places
     eyes took hard looks
saw
     contradiction
                        indefensible
                                         embarrassing
                                                       
"truths"

Now baggage discarded,
     questioned myself,
questioned others.
     'Allah knows best'
I am told,
     but no plugs for these holes

in grand narratives and arbitrary rules.
     Hard wired
blind devotion
     is to walk in emperors clothing.

Allah knows best
     once calmed my thinking,
till my truth outgrew its prison.
     Mine is not concrete or monstrous
beyond taboo
     I freely ponder.

Mine is but an aphids size
     voracious in its appetite

My truth remains unsure
       head held high.