Surgere... Mutare... Cinis... I lit a candle in the dark, and called it one thing, one flame, one spark. But the flame was never still, never one— it was a river dressed as the sun. The star rose first, a wound of light, then collapsed into the endless night. From its ash the planets came, spinning worlds of dust and flame. Life crawled out from the quiet sea, and called itself "I", and called itself "me". But the "I" that spoke was already gone— replaced by another moving on. What rises is already in decay, and still it rises anyway. The flame that stands is not the flame. The name that holds is not the name. Every second, every breath, is a death that gives new life to death. Everything that rises! Already becoming something else! The stars are not the stars! The flesh is not the flesh! We are the fire that never stays, a thousand flames inside one blaze— and still we rise, and still we burn, and still we never return! Consciousness arose and called itself free, but it was only the sea dreaming of the sea. Civilizations climbed toward the sky, built their towers, sang their pride. But the towers crumbled, the songs grew old, and the bright new world became another world. The mountain wears away in the wind. The ocean carves its grave within. And I—what am I, if not the same? A shape that borrows a borrowed name. The flame that stands is not the flame. The name that holds is not the name. Every second, every breath, is a death that gives new life to death. Everything that rises! Already becoming something else! The stars are not the stars! The flesh is not the flesh! We are the fire that never stays, a thousand flames inside one blaze— and still we rise, and still we burn, and still we never return! Rise... rise... rise... The pillar of flame is only a stream. The stone is only a frozen dream. What is born must break, must bend, must burn— and in its breaking, it becomes. I am not the flame I hold. I am not the hand, not the cold. I am the fire that moves through all— the rise, the fall, the rise, the fall. If everything that rises must descend, then every ending is a bend, not a break, not a grave— but the shape the river gave. The stars are rising through the dark, they do not ask, they do not mark. They only know they are the flame that burns and is not the same. Everything that rises! Already becoming something else! The stars are not the stars! The flesh is not the flesh! We are the fire that never stays, a thousand flames inside one blaze— and still we rise, and still we burn, and still we never return! But the rising never ends. The burning never fades. What we are is not a thing— it is a change that never stays. Surgere... Mutare... Cinis... Lux...
