The Inevitability

He asked me for my heart. And I gave it — not carved by hand, but cut open with the knife of time. Every year, every silence, every wound had sharpened that blade until it passed through me like inevitability. What I placed in his hands was not a symbol, but the raw, burning weight of my life — a heart heavier than the stars, heavier than everything I had ever carried or lost.

He weighed it on a scale — my heart on one side, the universe on the other. And the universe bowed, its gravity faltering under the magnitude of my grief.

Then he asked for my tears. I gave him a single drop — not just water, but molten sorrow distilled from years of silence. He let it fall into the waters of the world, and it struck like fire on the sea. Waves surged outward, devouring the land of my certainties, drowning the shores I once stood upon. Even the mountains of my strength bent beneath it.

When he looked at me then, I was a man standing in the cavern of darkness, my life torn open, my hands empty. My cry filled the hollow — a sound so deep it seemed to travel beyond time, echoing across the years. And from that cry was born the endless lament of humankind.

Yet, in that echo, something shifted. It was not an ending, but a beginning. The flood receded, and from its waters rose new ground — fragile, trembling, but mine. I stood there, scarred, not what I was, but still alive. And in that fragile silence, I began to learn, once again, how to rise from my own weight.