The bark is rough, wet, indifferent. It has not softened.
We move forward anyway, but we carry everything. The years in a job we never chose, the mornings we get up because the bills don’t pay themselves, the debts that make every step heavier. And beneath all that, older, more stubborn: the humiliations we thought we’d forgotten, the regrets that became habits, the small wounds that surface without warning. And time passing.
The past doesn’t stay behind. It works its way in, layer by layer, without our noticing. It becomes a shell. It shines, pretends to protect, serves as shelter on the days we don’t have the courage to go out.
And despite all of it, we make ourselves presentable. We polish that surface — soft, firm, lustrous — as if the outside could make up for the weight within. The shell gleams. We hold on to it.
But one step is enough. A distracted step, a step that never even saw us. And everything is destroyed. The patiently polished nacre, the hard appearance built year after year, gone without ever having been noticed.
