As I shed my skin like a tree sheds bark, I can either grow or age. But one leads to another; for to grow requires suffering, and to end suffering requires time.

Aging is, very simply, time.

And time, on this bluff, is the moss doing its slow mathematics on the stone, the marsh rehearsing its one long sentence, the cloud transforming itself overhead without regret, without ceremony, without needing to be remembered.

I would like to end that way. Not remembered, but, recycled. Returned to the ledger I could never balance, credited at last against the long account of everything I wore, burned, moved, and loved.