Forma... Nomen... Pulvis... What is a mountain, if not a slow collapse? What is a sea, if not a gathering of ghosts? I named the mountain, I named the sea, I drew a line between the world and me. But the mountain trembles, the sea withdraws, and the name I gave them was never a law. This body is a rented skin, a shape that breaks before it begins. They said: "You are this, you are that." But the sea does not ask what it is. It only moves. It only moves. A wave rose and called itself "I". It did not know it was the sea. And when it fell, it did not die— it only learned what it had always been. We mistake the shape for the thing! We mistake the name for the soul! The mountain is not the mountain! The sea is not the sea! We are the wave that forgets the ocean, and calls its falling "me." I have carried names like stones in my chest, but stones dissolve when the water insists. The body changes, the mind rewrites, and still I cling to the shape of nights. But if I am not the name I bear, then who is standing here, aware? The question is not "Who am I?" The question is "Why do I need to know?" A wave rose and called itself "I". It did not know it was the sea. And when it fell, it did not die— it only learned what it had always been. We mistake the shape for the thing! We mistake the name for the soul! The mountain is not the mountain! The sea is not the sea! We are the wave that forgets the ocean, and calls its falling "me." Form... form... form... Bound to the temporary... bound to the dust... The name dies before the body does. The body dies before the sea forgets. And the sea does not remember us. I am not the mountain. I am not the sea. I am not the body that carries me. I am the wave that will return, and in returning, finally learn that I was never separate at all. If I am not the shape I hold, then what remains when shapes grow old? Only the water. Only the light. Only the ocean, endless and bright. The wave is rising to the sky, it does not ask, it does not try. It only knows it is the sea— and the sea is endlessly free. We mistake the shape for the thing! We mistake the name for the soul! The mountain is not the mountain! The sea is not the sea! We are the wave that forgets the ocean, and calls its falling "me." But the ocean does not forget. The ocean does not name. The ocean only moves, and in its motion, we remain. Forma... Nomen... Pulvis... Mare...
