Legacy

 

If it were simple, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

If it were simple, it would be done in a heartbeat and then it would be over.

Tides seem monstrous in the dark. The swell a mutiny and a violation. And at dawn, the same tides settle and caress the sand, contrasting the violence and the din at night.

And when the sun sets again in the still of the following day, the storms are forgotten and there is a new day that enters the stage.

Whatever you desire is on the table.

You can settle for the buy in or you can take a chance.

It doesn’t matter, for the cards will fall as they will,

No matter how much you have invested.

When you remember, the time line is clear,

The chronology evident.

But when you’re blind and fumbling for the ends of the fabric that will create your quilt,

You can’t see the end product, and no amount of sketching will let you see what you will truly produce.

For destiny doesn’t exist.

Coincidence is certainty,

And the ordained is forgotten.

Or at least that’s what the years try to teach us.

Whimsical horses on a carousel lead you to a mortgage

And responsibility imprisons us.

This is the way it’s supposed to be.

This is what creates achievement and what is expected.

To be lost in your dreams and remain in your imagination is not what builds skyscrapers and superannuation.

That is not honorable or the right thing.

For to graduate at the gates of silver you must eventually fall into the mould you were given..

But

What if I can’t justify the pain of restriction?

What if I can’t wear that waist trainer for my dreams?

I could be all pretty, and still dead.

I could have all the houses and still be ash.

And the legacy I planted could be gold….

Or I can strive and balk and scream to be allowed to be free.

I can refuse to believe them.

I can close my eyes and see the patterns that bely the certainty of an investment.

Stand out for centuries as a ghost that maws at the dark.

A ghost that clutches at your chains and yanks at them from oblivion. A ghost that haunts itself in boxes and photographs that hang like leaves. And the deciduous years discard them in the end.

You are a clip you post that is too long. Trimmed to fit, you publish the valued part. The rest is the edge of forever, the irrelevant edges that padded your magna opus.