Love is the illusion more real than reality.

It is the deepest-rooted human need, and the most misunderstood at the same time. It is where the chase — if one is fortunate — finally takes a U-turn. Where the seeker stops, and discovers that what they were running toward had been running underneath them all along.

I wrote the first of these poems a year ago, on a February night, when the cycles had not yet completed. I wrote it from inside the rubble of a self I had folded too small. I did not publish it then. It was not finished — not because the words were missing, but because the living was.

Tonight, the cycles have closed. The patterns are released. And so this is not one poem. It is two. The seeker, and the one who came home.

This is for everyone who ever touched my life and claimed that they loved me. And for everyone still listening for the whisper beneath the noise.

I. The Hush

Sometimes, we hush —
and in that hush, truth stirs.

Behind the noise of purpose and plan,
beneath the masks we wear as “man,”
something ancient whispers:
What are you really chasing?

Gold? Goals? The fleeting dream of being seen?

But love —
love is not the finish line we cross,
it’s the field we’re running in.

It is remembrance:
the breath before the thought,
the silence before the song,
the quantum hum from which we came
and to which we endlessly belong.

It calls quietly —
through every touch, every loss, every sigh —
through empty cups that cannot fill,
for fullness is not in the getting,
but in the being still.

We can silence the voice,
bury it beneath ambition,
numb it with the comfort of motion —
yet somewhere between the beats of the heart,
it continues to call us home.

Love is the gravity drawing all things back to Origin,
the pulse beneath the pulse,
the infinite remembering itself through us.

From Rumi to Ghalib. From Juliet to Meera.
It is the search — which is also the mirage of it.

There is a moment, after the hush has spoken, when the seeker has to fall. Not as failure. As surrender. The math we folded ourselves into has to break before the sky inside can be found. This is what the next poem remembers — written one year ago today, lived every day since.

II. Beneath My Own Sky

I folded myself into their math —
smaller, quieter, a shadow of halves.
Let their shoulds build a cage in my chest,
while my voice slept like coins in a vest.

Then came the fall — the crack, the split —
where all my borrowed armor quit.
In the rubble, I found a different script:
my pulse, unedited. My breath, unclipped.

Healing’s not erasing. It’s the flame
that flickered low but knew its name.
Sewing the dark with threads of Orion,
dancing to rhythms I’d sworn were wrong.

Now I trade their scales for my own weather —
trust the north in my veins, not their tether.
Let their swords clang. Let their gold rust.
My roots dig deeper in honest dust.

Things can’t buy the peace I own.
Hate’s just wind — it can’t snuff out the sun.
The real romance? Learning to see
the stranger in the mirror was always me.

The moon? A lesson, not a law.
My light’s enough to fill the flaw.
Every scar they called a defeat?
Just my soul’s braille, complete.

Enemies shout, but their words grow faint —
confetti in the storm of my ain’t.
The only treaty? My heartbeat’s treaty.
The only weapon? My love, steady.

Coda

The seeker asks: What am I chasing?
The one who came home answers: Nothing. I am the field.

Love was never the prize at the end of the running. It was the ground beneath the feet the whole time. The mirage and the oasis were the same water — drunk by the same Self, remembering itself through a thousand thirsty mouths.

If you have ever loved me, or thought you did — thank you. You were a mirror. Every reflection, kind or cruel, was the Source reminding me to come back.

If you are still searching — I promise you, the hush is honest. Sit with it. Let it stir. The U-turn is not a defeat. It is the moment Origin recognizes itself in your chest and says, you can stop running now. You were always here.

The only treaty is the heartbeat’s treaty.
The only weapon is love, steady.

— Shiv

February 27, 2025 → June 5, 2026
San Antonio, Texas

Dr. Shiv Kumar Goel is a board-certified physician practicing Internal, Functional, and Aesthetic Medicine in San Antonio, Texas. He is the founder of Prime Vitality Wellness and the author of the forthcoming book Healing the Split: When Your Biology Is Fighting Your Biography. He writes at healingthesplit.com and hosts the Healing the Split podcast.

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