The Ballads of Gravity

Be careful of the stairs you build to reach your heaven. If even one step is laid upon another person’s tears, if your ascent is carried by the curse of a broken soul, remember this: the Universe keeps an immaculate ledger. Nothing is forgotten. The wound you leave in another does not disappear simply because you have climbed beyond their reach. The grave you dig for another may one day become the ground beneath your own feet. What you cast into the world does not vanish; it travels, waits, and returns. So ascend—but ascend with clean hands. For no height is high enough to absolve a man from what he has done below. Whatever is built upon the ruins of another heart carries its own destruction within it. And when Time finally comes to collect the debt, neither wealth nor power nor the height of the heaven you have built will matter. The bill will be waiting.

She had just celebrated her hundredth birthday. A hundred years. The number fascinated me more than the life it contained. I looked at her and thought, What a blessing. Imagine living for a century. At that age, I still measured life in quantity. I had not yet learned that years accumulate differently from meaning. She rarely spoke. The world had slowly withdrawn from her senses. Food no longer delighted her. Conversations dissolved before reaching her. The pleasures that once animated her existence had become distant rumours from another life. She had possessed almost everything one could desire—a loving husband, a beautiful home, security, comfort, longevity. By every conventional measure, she had won. Yet old age is a peculiar thief. It does not steal all at once. It removes things patiently, one by one, until only a few fragments remain. For Anne, only three things survived the wreckage. Her husband. Her home. And the longing to return. Every day she asked the same questions. ...

I choose the heart of darkness — not in despair, but in reverence — to immerse myself in its monstrous chaos, the womb from which all beginnings bleed into existence. I do not flee the shadows; I invite them. I slow the light, restrain it, keep it from intruding too close—because some truths are born only where light hesitates.  I sense what is coming. The slow unravelling of the world. A moment when day and night lose their boundaries and collapse into a single breath. When direction dissolves and humanity forgets where it stands. Time loosens its grip. Space forgets its shape.  In that hour, man will begin to speak languages he has never learned, utter sounds older than memory itself. He will see beyond the limits of his eyes, hear frequencies never meant for human ears. Perception will stretch, fracture, expand—until meaning itself trembles.  And in that unsettling clarity, where fear and wonder merge, the truth will no longer hide. It will rise—not in light, but in t...