I’ve worn through every reason like soles that forgot the earth. Each morning happens without permission, as if I’m someone worth returning to. I keep rehearsing how to stay, a ritual stripped of faith. The body remembers what effort costs but not what it gave. I call it progress because I’ve run out of names. If I stop, I disappear. If I move, I split. Tell me, what kind of mercy is I go on, though the ground keeps shifting. Each step erases where I’ve been. There’s no triumph in endurance only proof I haven’t quit. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s all. The glass forgot my face, yet it still remembers weight. Hope drags like weathered stone, anchored deep where lungs once reached. I asked the quiet what it kept when meaning fell apart. It said, “The fire still burns you just stopped calling it light.” Is this strength or just resistance? How many mornings can a rhythm pretend? If I tear myself open for reason, will I find truth or proof I failed again? There’s mercy in momentum, an elegance in ruin. Maybe staying alive was never a decision just the weight of motion pretending to be me. I go on, because stillness won’t have me. Each motion, a pretend defiance. The end will come, but not today.... even embers, imitate light.
