The Syntax Of Survival

Life isn’t the story

you tell

after brushing lips with death.

That is spectacle.

A bullet.

A blade.

A bus. 

A bulldozer. 

A moment

loud enough

to be remembered.

Sudden.

Overwhelming.

Singular.

And singulars

are easy.

They arrive complete.

They leave behind

a clean sentence.

Life

is not written

in singular.

It stutters.

It repeats.

It refuses

completion.

Life is plural.

Not just

not dying once;

but surviving

again

and again

and again.

It is

not breaking the nib

when the hand trembles.

Not tearing the page

when the ink

thickens

into something

that feels like blood.

Because unlike death, 

surviving life

is not an event.

It has no witnesses.

No applause.

No language

that stays.

It is the discipline

of continuation.

And continuation

is not heroic.

It is mechanical.

A body

choosing

not to stop

without knowing why.

You are not alive

because you chose to be.

You are alive

because you have not

stopped.

And that's as hopeful

as hope ever gets. 

Hope

is not light.

Hope

is repetition.

And repetition

does not ask

if it means anything.

It continues.

So do you.