It’s not the grand pose
we think it is—
not the front page
not the polished march.

Dignity clings
quiet as moss
on a tired stone
its roots stubborn
but never loud.

Mortality waits
without applause
like a quiet gentleman
holding the door.
No roll-call
no bad timing—
only unseen
endings,
like it or not
arriving on time.

It’s the small things
that matter—
a hand brushing dust
from a collar
the spine
staying upright
even as the wind
does its best
to push us
down.

I try to hold it—
the way light rests on water,
the way laughter lingers in an empty room.
But time moves like someone late for a train,
no looking back, no hesitation,
the scuff of a heel—then vanished.

It leaves behind the small things—
a cold cup of coffee on a nightstand,
a book left open waiting to be read,
that no one will finish reading.

I ask why—
why does it move so fast,
why does it take more than it leaves,
why do we even bother—

Outside,
the trees don’t seem to mind—
they bend in the wind,
let go of their leaves,
and wait for the next season
without complaint.

Maybe that’s the trick—
to stop asking so much,
to leave only ripples in its wake,
to walk alongside it
instead of chasing its shadow.

We are fireflies in an unblinking void,
flaring bright, burning fast;
a luminous defiance against the dark
that will swallow us whole.

But oh, what a mercy to burn at all.

What grace, that time does not ask permission
before it turns the mountain to dust,
before it steals our names from the wind,
before it makes ghosts of our laughter.

The stars do not grieve their own collapse,
nor does the tide weep for the shore it leaves behind.
Even the dying tree bursts into crimson,
a final hymn of color before the fall.

And yet, we rage
against the breaking, against the fading,
against the silence that waits with open arms.

But the mercy of existence is not in what stays.
It is in the vanishing, the undoing,
the soft surrender to the truth
that nothing was ever truly ours to keep.

This is the gift;
to love knowing it will end,
to weep knowing it was worth it,
to exist knowing we will be forgotten.

So let us not beg the sun to linger,
nor curse the night for coming.
Instead, let us burn, let us bloom,
let us vanish like we were never here.

And let that be enough.

Orange spreads softly—
a freshness stretched across fields,
horizons kissing the sun goodbye,
where the sky leans close, and
dreams dissolve into a warm night.

It lives in the laughter of children,
the spark of first loves,
the soft ache of waiting—
the sweet and bitter taste of it,
all at once, like ripe fruit,
heavy on a branch.

I see it draped across the sky—
a silk robe, streaked with amber
and flame, still ardent at daybreak,
whenever I think of you.

So let us gather orange, let it
rest between what was and
what might be. Each shade,
an ember of something tender,
something alive that endures—
an inner fire, forever bright,
forever ours.