What We Leave Behind
Written: October 04, 2026, as A sample for the contest What we leave Behind.
We do not leave our footsteps to the earth;
the rain unthreads them, reed by reed, from stone.
Nor does the house remember what we were—
its walls absorb our voices, then grow lone.
We leave the warmth that lingered in a chair,
a photograph grown silver at the seam,
the scent of roses suspended in the air,
a half-remembered cadence in a dream.
We leave the words we uttered without care,
the wound they opened, and the scar that stayed;
the kindness no one witnessed anywhere,
the small reprieve a stranger’s grief was paid.
We leave ourselves in those who knew our name:
a gesture, an expression, a way of seeing;
some ember smouldering beneath the ash of time,
some unanswered question still becoming.
Perhaps our truest legacy is not what lasts,
but what, once touched by us, is changed—
a life made gentler, briefly, by our passing;
a darkness that remembers it was light.
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