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We do not rise. We are emptied. The soul is not a ladder but a wound that forgets its shape. We outgrow our names the way fire outgrows the wood that once believed it was solid. There is a season when identity begins to itch. The skin rejects its own biography. Memories molt. Faces peel from the mirror like old paint from a condemned house. Holiness is not clean. It smells of soil. Of damp earth and unfinished decay. It asks for decomposition as proof of readiness. Something in us must die without obituary. Without applause. Without the comfort of being understood. The next is not higher. It is thinner. Less voice. Less claim. Less insistence on being seen. Breath stops arguing with fate. It no longer says “why.” It no longer asks “when.” It enters like winter through broken glass and leaves as smoke through a roof that no longer exists. And God even God is no longer a negotiation. Not a throne. Not a judge. Not a reward. Only an absence so vast it devours the idea of distance. Light bends. It realizes shadow was never opposition but the backside of its own body. They were born conjoined one luminous, one mute, sharing the same spine. Forgiveness does not descend. It implodes. The architecture of “me” collapses inward. Titles fracture. Bloodlines dissolve. The heir forgets inheritance. The sinner forgets sin. The saint forgets virtue. Ash does not remember fire. And in that nameless field where even memory dissolves there is a pulse. Not yours. Not mine. Just a rhythm without ownership. A darkness so saturated with itself that it begins to shine.
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Feb 25
Feb 25, 2026 at 2:56 AM UTC
The Level After Ash
We do not rise. We are emptied. The soul is not a ladder but a wound that forgets its shape. We outgrow our names the way fire outgrows the wood that once believed it was solid. There is a season when identity begins to itch. The skin rejects its own biography. Memories molt. Faces peel from the mirror like old paint from a condemned house. Holiness is not clean. It smells of soil. Of damp earth and unfinished decay. It asks for decomposition as proof of readiness. Something in us must die without obituary. Without applause. Without the comfort of being understood. The next is not higher. It is thinner. Less voice. Less claim. Less insistence on being seen. Breath stops arguing with fate. It no longer says “why.” It no longer asks “when.” It enters like winter through broken glass and leaves as smoke through a roof that no longer exists. And God even God is no longer a negotiation. Not a throne. Not a judge. Not a reward. Only an absence so vast it devours the idea of distance. Light bends. It realizes shadow was never opposition but the backside of its own body. They were born conjoined one luminous, one mute, sharing the same spine. Forgiveness does not descend. It implodes. The architecture of “me” collapses inward. Titles fracture. Bloodlines dissolve. The heir forgets inheritance. The sinner forgets sin. The saint forgets virtue. Ash does not remember fire. And in that nameless field where even memory dissolves there is a pulse. Not yours. Not mine. Just a rhythm without ownership. A darkness so saturated with itself that it begins to shine.
Marwan-Baytie
Written by
56/M/Australia
Feb 25
Feb 25, 2026 at 2:56 AM UTC
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