41
Identity waits in the quiet after the body.
It stands like a figure at low tide,
half revealed, half taken back by the sea
as the body gives its last breath.
Memory moves differently.
It keeps a few shapes in the sun
and lets the rest sink into the silt,
slowly, gradually, reluctantly.
Some spirits rise because a single voice
still knows how to call them.
Others drift like smoke,
searching for a place to settle.
To be forgotten twice is hard.
The first forgetting belongs to the living.
The second belongs to whatever follows.
Yet something remains.
An outline on a wall.
A breath in a cold room.
A shadow holding its place in a doorway.
Perhaps the afterlife is only
the distance between a name
and the silence that answers it.
