Materia... Nomen... Nihil... When does a mountain stop being a mountain? When does "I" stop being "I"? The mountain stood and wore its name, a crown of stone, a throne of flame. But heat came slow, the rock ran wet, and what was mountain became regret. The body walked and called itself "me", a shape of breath and memory. But flesh unwinds to atom dust, and "me" becomes a word of rust. At what point did the mountain fall? At what point did the name not hold? At what point does a thing become a story that was never told? The name is not the thing. The thing is not the name. The mountain was not stone— it was a flame that changed. When matter forgets its name! When the shape no longer claims! At what point does a thing stop being itself? When the mountain is not mountain, when the self is not the self, when the word is only sound— and nothing more is found! I spoke my name into the dark, and the dark spoke back without a spark. I asked the mirror who I was, the mirror showed a hollow cause. The skin, the bone, the thought, the breath— all borrowed, all at war with death. But if the self is only form, then what is standing in the storm? If I shed my name, my face, my past, what remains when shapes don't last? Is there a core, or only change? Is there a soul, or just a range? The name is not the thing. The thing is not the name. The mountain was not stone— it was a flame that changed. When matter forgets its name! When the shape no longer claims! At what point does a thing stop being itself? When the mountain is not mountain, when the self is not the self, when the word is only sound— and nothing more is found! Name... name... name... The word dissolves. The stone dissolves. The self dissolves. What remains? What remains? I am not the name they gave. I am not the form I save. I am not the body, not the thought— I am the space where all is naught. If I am not the name I speak, then what is left when names grow weak? Only the silence, only the air, only the answer that is not there. The bell will toll, the choir will fade, the names we gave will be unmade. But something watches, something knows— the current beneath the name still flows. When matter forgets its name! When the shape no longer claims! At what point does a thing stop being itself? When the mountain is not mountain, when the self is not the self, when the word is only sound— and nothing more is found! But in the fading of the name, something wordless still remains. Not the mountain, not the stone— but the pulse that was never alone. Materia... Nomen... Nihil... Aeternum...
