The Beautiful Lie

We are born only half-formed,
souls still soft,
unknowing of the abyss beneath the floorboards.
For a moment — before thought, before memory —
we are whole.
Before language carves meaning into us,
before self-awareness splits the mirror,
we drift unbroken in the dark.

Then consciousness comes —
like a blade disguised as a crown.
We learn words,
we learn death,
we learn the hollow ache of wanting to know why.
We begin to fracture under the weight of our own reflection.

Losing loved ones deepens the fault lines.
What was once a single wound becomes a pattern.
Grief hits like waves against a small boat.
At first they come often, sharp, violent,
trying to capsize the vessel of our heart.
Later they come less often,
longer intervals between storms.
We mistake the calm for healing.
We call it “moving on.”
But each wave leaves a crack,
each interval leaves a new silence.

We mend what’s left of our soul,
but the repairs are temporary.
The next loss will shatter it again.
And again.
Until there is no one left to lose,
no one left to look up to,
no childhood left inside you
to hold your hand through the dark.

People say life is beautiful and death is scary.
But life is a beautiful lie:
a shimmering veil we wear to keep from screaming.
Death is the horrifying truth:
the silence, the erasure,
the end of even the echo of our names.

In two generations, you will be forgotten.
Your bones will crumble.
Your laughter will not exist even in memory.
This is not tragedy; it is simply the way of things.
And yet, knowing this,
we light candles for the dead,
we pray to empty sky,
we whisper our dreams into the void.

Perhaps this is our only act of defiance:
to stand in the beautiful lie,
knowing the horrifying truth,
and still breathe,
still ache,
still love.