What Remains

In an empty house, an abandoned palace, a ransacked museum, what remains? Ash and dust settle where sunlight once pooled; like snow they blanket the spaces where tables once stood, where dresses once fluttered—in short, where life once lived. We live only once, or perhaps that is not true; some wise beings say we live a hundred thousand times, cycling through eternity, but in each life perhaps we feel that we live only once. And of a life once lived, what remains? And say life were to leave prematurely, through some miscalculation of the gods, say life were to leave before our bodies were ready, leaving a kind of half-life, a twilit state, an empty house that time has yet to destroy, an empty museum where memories haunt? What then? Sometimes I feel that life is lighter than a feather, a kind of kite we pull along, trusting that a fragile string will tether us to what makes us feel alive, tether us to the only thing that even nearly comes to touch the sky. But ash and dust float higher than kites when the wind sets them afloat, in a dance, a quiet dance that moths alone can hear. I hear the moths fluttering against my windowpane. They are beating their wings to the rhythm of two words: “What remains? What remains? What remains?”