Your hands once held the vessel whole—
smooth with years, unmarked by sorrow,
a simple offering of days.
But it slipped, and in a breath
was scattered—
pieces lying fragile and sharp
upon the ground of grief.
You gathered them, trembling,
yet could not restore what once had been.
And so the fragments remained—
not as they were,
but as something waiting to be remade.
There descends a great hush after the breaking—
when the earth lies colder than the heavens above,
and each breath is weighted with the sorrow of endings.
Behind you rest the shattered relics of what once was,
before you stretches a path draped in shadow,
and all seems surrendered to silence.
Yet even here, within the stillness of desolation,
strength begins its hidden labor.
There comes a hush after the burning—
when the air is thick with endings,
and the earth is draped in a garment of gray.
What once was radiant has been unmade,
what once bore form has yielded to dust,
and all seems given over to silence.
Yet even here, in the stillness of surrender,
the hidden labor of renewal begins its quiet work.
In the beginning, it was only burden—
stone laid upon stone,
its shadow descending into the hollow of your shoulders,
pressing the hours into a slow and heavy hush.
You did not summon it,
yet it came, unbidden,
and you, without complaint or flourish,
took it upon your frame—
step by unnumbered step,
through the measureless corridors of days.
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