Lifeless life

So this is all I will ever be?

[the-lifeless-life]

Thoughts, that turned into words, words that turned into actions, actions that turned into moments, moments that turned into memories, memories that were once just thoughts, turned into forgotten stories.

[the-lifeless-life]

the heart that accelerates at the sound of a particular voice, the hand that recoils before it understands why.

[the-lifeless-life]

to wash the face of the dead, close its eyes, fold its hands across the chest, pronounce the funeral complete, to lower the coffin quietly, to throw the first earth, to stand among the mourners without an expression.

[the-lifeless-life]

tomorrow does not return the word once, it only carries it forward, heavier each time, until eventually the dead become indistinguishable from the person carrying them, until i can no longer tell whether i am mourning my past or being haunted by the future i refused to enter.

[the-lifeless-life]

a thousand almost-invisible choices stacked one upon another like stones no one notices until the grave is too deep to climb out of, i did not become myself in a single act, this accumulated weight of everything i have eventually become. A little cowardice polished into wisdom.

[the-lifeless-life]

the body did not care whether my lungs regretted what my heart has done, it simply covered it, slowly, completely, as though burial were not an act of violence but a form of housekeeping, as though the earth had been waiting patiently for me to finish making a mess of myself, as though some transformations would not resemble a house burning from the inside.

[the-lifeless-life]

the sound of soil settling over the person I once was.

[the-lifeless-life]

the complicated pantomime of being alive.

[the-lifeless-life]

holding hand without calculating what it might cost.

[the-lifeless-life]

the lungs of someone who had drowned without anyone noticing.

[the-lifeless-life]

the microscopic remains of moments that should have died when the moment ended.

[the-lifeless-life]

The imagination playing tricks after midnight.

[the-lifeless-life]

The grave contains no corpse.

[the-lifeless-life]

the terrible stillness of portraits whose subjects have long since died.

[the-lifeless-life]

A name I can no longer remember without remembering the person I was when I first heard it.

[the-lifeless-life]

the grave has become too deep to remember what had first been lowered into it.

[the-lifeless-life]

the unguarded stillness of a soul that has not yet discovered the necessity of disguises.