If Peace Had A Face
Still Searching
I feel like I’m still searching for a place, a person, a feeling that doesn’t exist. If I had to describe what it looks like or what it feels like, I wouldn’t be able to. How can I long for something I can’t even put into words? Something I’ve never touched, never known, and somehow deeply miss. Yet, I swear I’ve tasted it sweet promises like the last drop of honey lingering on my tongue. Like the wind whispering in your ear one second, then gone the next. I just know I haven’t found it yet. The feeling sits in me like heart palpitations, the beating following me wherever I go, reminding me that there is still something more waiting for me. Like trying to capture smoke in my bare hands, I reach for it and it slips away before I can make sense of it. I don’t know what it is, only that I feel the absence of it. And somewhere deep within me, I believe it’s the thing that will finally make something in me whole. The missing piece.
Other cultures have tried to name this feeling, to bottle it into a single word. Saudade, a Portuguese word, describes a deep emotional longing for a person, place, or experience that is absent, often carrying a yearning for something that may never have existed at all. The Welsh have hiraeth, a homesickness for a home you can no longer return to, or perhaps one that never truly existed in the first place. There is even anemoia, the feeling of nostalgia for a time or place you’ve never known. These words come close. Close enough to make me pause, even feel seen for a moment. But none of them fully capture the complexity of this longing, this endless search for peace, for home. There is something about it that remains just out of reach, beyond language, beyond definition.
A beautiful frustration that even the most beautiful words humanity has created still fall short of describing this particular ache. So I try to visualize.
If peace had a face, and I could trace its features, I don’t think I would describe it the way people usually describe beauty. I wouldn’t say it looked like a rose or compare it to anything meant to be admired from a distance. I would simply say it looked like peace. Its shape would be carved from the endless planes of blue skies during a silent midafternoon haze, softened by the patient curves of Caribbean waters meeting the shore. It would carry the warmth of the sun resting on glistening skin, the kind of warmth that asks nothing of you except to be still long enough to receive it.
It looks like amnesia from every worry that has ever followed me, every burden that has clung to my shoulders, every fear that has stolen a piece of my heart. It feels like a long exhale in a field of baby’s breath and sunflowers, where the air is crisp and nothing is asking anything of me. Like closing my eyes without the fear of having to open them too soon.
It looks like justice personified.
A full-blown reckoning for those who mistook my love for weakness, who met my sincerity with harm, who left me carrying wounds I never deserved. And for a moment, standing in the presence of that calmness, I imagine what it would feel like to be free of all of it.
Oblivion upon them! No remorse.
It looks like lush hills and sharp mountain trails, with ice caps holding the purest drinking water—untouched and unpolluted by man. Peace is handsome. Well put together. Liberated. It carries the beauty of long hugs met with soft neck kisses and quiet reassurance, the kind of love expressed through presence, support, and deep understanding rather than words. There is loyalty in peace’s eyes, something consistent and unwavering, something that does not leave when things become heavy. And safety rests softly on the surface of its lips—not spoken loudly, but felt instantly, like entering somewhere your body recognizes before your mind can explain why.
Peace looks like a full belly, financial freedom, and an ease with productivity’s guilt finally loosening its grip.
It stands tall, dressed in knowledge and wiser decisions, carrying a balance of passionate fire and angelic desires that no longer war with each other. I imagine peace wrapping me in slow, golden hours—softness that looks like resting without apology; lingering lazy laying and lollygagging without shame. Time intentionally poured into hours that melt into days without regret, or urgency, without the feeling that I am already behind.
It looks like the color green, serene.
If peace had a face, that’s what I imagine it would look like. I’m still searching—still yearning—for this feeling, this person, this place that may ever exist. And still, I move through the world hoping it does. Maybe one day I’ll find it. Or maybe it will always feel like something just beyond the reach of my hands.