for eleanor

This piece felt relevant today. Reposting this fragment.

I suppose that is what breaks my heart: that we’re really all alive

until we’re forgotten, 

and everyone is forgotten eventually. 

The exception to that rule is what we leave behind,

rather than who we leave behind. 

We are immortalized in art. In physical things, 

in paintings and history books and documents that we signed our names on. 

We stay alive in every word we ever wrote and every picture we drew. 

Therefore, even though the population is about 7 billion, 

it is trillions upon trillions of people whose footprints remain in our sands;

we hold centuries in our palms, each day. 

It is these things, the immortal things suddenly made mortal, 

that I will mourn when the world ends.