A Reflection in Quiet Solitude - Between the Breaking and the Breath

Here is a poem that is a reflection in quiet solitude.

A Reflection in Quiet Solitude

If this is the last thing I leave behind,

let it be a quiet thing—

not a plea,

not a declaration,

not a sermon from the ruins of belief.

Just a record of the weight

I have dragged across the years:

meaning stripped to the bone,

purpose shattered into questions,

faith disassembled

piece by trembling piece

until nothing remained

but the echo of its absence.

I have watched my world

—slowly, methodically—

unthread itself.

What once felt sacred

now sits like dust on my tongue.

What once felt like calling

now feels like a story

I can’t tell without flinching.

People see the shell and assume

pride, rebellion, arrogance—

anything that spares them

from looking at the quiet erosion

behind my eyes.

It is easier to name a man

than to understand him.

And solitude,

which once held me like a friend,

no longer feeds me.

It is just another empty room

where my thoughts echo too loudly,

closing in,

tightening,

pressing

until breath feels like labour.

I have walked through meanings that collapsed

like old cathedrals in my chest,

and knelt before questions

that unmade the world I once called home.

I have carried truths that cut,

contradictions that burned through certainty,

histories stained with blood and silence,

and I have watched the pillars of my purpose

crumble under the weight of honesty.

They called me whatever they would

But they did not hear the quiet wars

my mind has fought in the dark,

or the tremor of a heart

that once believed it could heal the world.

Solitude was my bread,

but even solitude can starve a man

when the soul grows thin.

Some nights, the sadness is an ocean

with no shore in sight.

Some days, the thoughts come like waves

that know no mercy.

And yet—

in the small, fragile space

between the breaking

and the breath—

I am still here.

Not certain.

Not whole.

Not unbroken.

But here.

I do not write this to be saved.

I do not write this to be understood.

I do not write this to be corrected

or comforted

or redirected toward a horizon

I no longer believe exists.

I write it because

something in me needed to record

the truth as I feel it:

that hope is a mirage,

that the world remains what it is,

that suffering circles itself,

that meaning leaks through every crack.

If these words are my final offering

to the species I once tried to love,

let them simply stand as witness

to the exhaustion of a soul

that has seen too much,

felt too deeply,

thought too far,

and found nothing left

to cling to.

A mind that refuses to calcify

is a mind still alive.

A heart that aches at the world

is a heart still capable of love.

A soul that questions

is a soul still reaching for light

even when it cannot name it

an evidence that even in drowning

a voice still rises.

About the Author

Adeyeye Samuel Oluwatosin is a Nigerian writer, entrepreneur and educator.

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