Etched Impermanence

We won’t last. Not the way we hope to.

Not in the flesh, not in the form we’re wrapped in now.

But what we make from this, what we pour into the world from the places we’ve cracked open, that will.

I think that’s why we’re here. Not to be perfect. Not to be remembered by name. But to make art out of our living.

Our life is the brush. The pen. The prayer. The song.

And some of it becomes tangible and

held in hands, framed on walls, shelved in libraries, streamed in cars during long drives home. Caroline and Mary and Lynette are all right here in the art adorning my walls. Every author I’ve ever loved breathes again when I turn a page. Every lyric that made me cry has shaped the way I see the world.

We become what we’ve touched, and what we’ve touched becomes the next thread in the great tapestry.

Every time we stay soft when we could’ve hardened. Every time we write the truth even when no one is listening. Every time we let love move through us instead of fear…

That’s the masterpiece.

The art is what lasts. Not the argument. Not the to-do list. Not the trial. Not the version of us we performed to be accepted.

Just the art.

The way we loved our children.

The way we danced in the kitchen.

The way we held hands with grief and made room for awe. The way we laughed until we wheezed.

That’s what the field remembers.

That’s what time bends for.

That’s what becomes legend.

We took the ache and let the fire warm us instead of burn us. We let the tears become ink. We came here to leave traces of our soul in everything we touched, not in stone, but in story.

Not to last forever, but to make something that does. We are the becoming, the arrival, the departure, the poetry and the aftermath all at once. We are the collateral beauty that comes from staring at the void, and deciding we might as well paint it.

So I’m not rushing anymore. I’m not hoarding words or chasing clarity. I’m just living it… this wild, radiant, heartbreaking, divine life. Like a comet that knows it’s temporary and burns across the sky anyway because the trail becomes a path and that path is lit in the divine truth that will guide the ones that will come after.