Accumulation

Each pebble dropped into still water makes rings we cannot hold— they spread until the surface forgets it was ever smooth.

We are collectors of these small disruptions, watchers of the circle's slow erasure. What we call change is merely the body learning to wear its own weight.

In the margins between one breath and the next, moss finds its grip on stone. The cliff does not feel itself becoming gentler, does not mourn the dust that falls.

We call it loss or growth depending on which way we turn to watch it. The river doesn't choose its path downward— it simply cannot remember climbing.

And yet we stand here, shaped by countless imperceptible shifts, each one a verdict we never voted on, a tide that entered us when we weren't looking.