Weathered Grace

Years pass like water through a sieve.

You look at your reflection and see every blunder

and every lucky break etched into your skin.

You think you build a structure to defy the inevitable collapse,

then time catches you. It wears down the sharp edges

of temper and pride until only a pile of memories

and habits remains.

We burn energy trying to become someone,

trying to define a version of ourselves we can finally respect.

Then you look back and see the person you were at twenty or thirty

as a stranger. The years rearrange the landscape so completely

that even your own footprints seem to belong to someone else.

You act as a passenger in a body that keeps changing its needs.

You eat, you sleep, you labor, you try to get along

with the people closest to you, and all the while

you carry the load of who you once were,

dragging old versions of yourself into each new day.

It gets easier to accept you lack command of the outcome.

You do what you can for the people who need you,

you try to keep your head above the daily mess,

and you wait for the next sunrise. There is a quiet wisdom

in learning how little was ever yours to control.

No secret exists. You survive the long haul and see what remains

when the sun finally sets on your time.

Not the structure you built, nor the image you defended,

but the traces left in others, the habits of kindness and endurance,

and the life that continued, imperfectly, through you.