Gnawed inside by death’s duress,
the path of life contracts.

Mortality’s hand pressures, carves, heats,
The depths—
honing each facet,
sheared to self-clarity,
compressed to a living core.

raw vein—
left beating.

A pared-down existence—
and it is enough.

By shortening time,
dross is burnished away.
Ego retreats,
disarmed.

Open to love without guard,
to the sacred in time,
to wholeness—
to the now,
to this strange gift of mortality,
faced without turning away.

In dwindling light,
simply refined,
reduced to essence—

I become light,
Once refracted
broken and gathered,
into a single, clarified jewel.

Originally written: 8/13-8/15, 2025