In the end

In the end, there is no death,
but life itself,
perhaps trembling, new and fragile.

We first feel the darkness,
not the chalice of light,
offered to us softly,
as if hope were a whisper in the wind.

Love, ambivalent, ecstatic-
is frightening.

Not because it is absent,
but because it transforms everything
we have painstakingly built.

It feels like risk,
like a heart rebelling against reason,
like a storm tearing the old apart,
before we even grasp the metamorphosis.

For where love awakens,
something else dies:
the self, that dark despot,
that made us believe
that pain was protection.

Let everything crumble, break all bonds.

And then, breathe:
The morning receives only the now, and you are alive.


© Marcel Strömer
[Magdeburg, 02.02.2026]