He had mistaken endurance for proof.
So he kept what the dark had given him:
the iron taste,
the borrowed pulse,
the old mathematics of survival.

Cities changed names around him.
Oaths changed mouths.
The same doors learned different hinges.

He became very good
at standing where the light could not quite reach.

Then came the mountain.

Not mercy.
Not judgment.
Only heat enough
to make old certainties run like metal.

He returned carrying less.

No choir announced it.
No hand erased the ledger.
The dead remained dead.
The names remained where he had left them.

Still,
the lungs remembered air.

Still,
the morning entered without permission.

Now he walks among those
who measure themselves by a horizon
he once would have called naive.

He does not call it that anymore.

He has learned there are fires
which do not ask what a thing was
before deciding what it may become.

And somewhere beneath the ribs,
where hunger once kept its throne,
there is only the difficult sound

of something choosing
not to go out.

Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 18th of Ivolnos, in the year 21 AC.