Time waits for none, they say. After all, in the end, we will all be forgotten.
One day, time will decide we’ve lived long enough, and it will wash us away like waves smothering the footprints on a beach. One day, we will no longer have existed, as the world spins on without notice.
But will we, really? If we scratch our initials on an ancient tree, and years later a little girl, just beginning to read, runs her fingers along the edges of our untidy scrawl. If she grins, finally deciphering the letters, and hops away cheerfully. If one day, a lonely man reads our incoherent musings in a second-hand book and feels, for once, like he has someone in the world who understands him.
Humans ache to be remembered. To live, even after they are long gone, through broken picture frames and barely used paint bottles. Leaving marks on the world, leaving behind little trails of broken hearts and pencil shavings. Initials, carved alongside their loved ones. Names scrawled on broken walls.
I lived here, they tell you. I lived and I loved and I felt so, so much. I felt the breeze on my eyelashes and fell in love with the moon. I smiled at small animals and cried watching documentaries. I stepped on dried leaves when it was autumn and it made me so happy. Once, I was here. I was here, I was here, I was here. Remember me, they beg. Remember us all, they whisper.
Time waits for none, they say. After all, in the end, we will all be forgotten. One day, time will decide we’ve lived long enough, and it will wash us away like waves smothering the footprints on a beach.
