what remains

In a thousand years, what will remain of this? The aqueduct, perhaps. A road. A name repeated in a textbook no one reads-a footnote in a footnote of a flame. The words I wrote in private, in the dark, survive the battles and the emperors. Strange- that the most unguarded things endure while all the monuments become the dust they feared.



So what do you build? What do you carve into the face of time? Nothing permanent. Only what was true.



What remains is not the stone. What remains is not the name. What remains is the quality of attention you gave to the brief and burning flame. How you stood. How you chose. How you faced the thing you feared. What remains is the silence after action- the shape of who you were.



The Tiber carries everything to sea. The sea forgets. The sky has seen it all. And still-somehow -the effort was not nothing. The moment of integrity did not fall. It happened. That is permanent enough. A choice well made exists outside of time. The universe observed it, even briefly. And brief is all we ever get to claim.



What remains is not the stone. What remains is not the name. What remains is the quality of attention you gave to the brief and burning flame.