^{Discovering One’s Identity}

^{Might there be an echo beneath the skin?}

^{The body of time is translucent,}

^{veins of memory flicker beneath its skin}

^{like lightning trapped in glass.}

^{We walk its surface leaving bruises instead of footprints,}

^{each one a whisper of what refused to be forgotten.}

^{Existence is a flood that never asks permission.}

^{It seeps into the pores of stone,}

^{drinks from the mouths of sleeping rivers,}

^{and carves its name into the bark of breath.}

^{Even silence has sediment,}  

^{layers of longing pressed into the soil.}

^{We are the residue of storms,}

^{the salt left behind after grief evaporates.}

^{Our touch is a kind of erosion,}

^{a slow undoing of permanence.}

^{Yet in the marrow of every collapse a new pulse stirs,}  

^{not rebirth, but recognition.}

^{And when the stars blink and the shutter of night clicks closed,}

^{do we remain, not as light, but as the echo it leaves in the dark?}