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Triad of Echoes, Moments and Laughter

By Alves dos Santos

Illustration by Allen B. Thangkhiew

I – The Weight of the Stars

We are dust torn from infinity,
born of galaxies colliding in realms we’ll never see
Within our chests echoes the light of dead stars,
the glow of something that existed before us,
yet insists on lingering

Every step is a contradiction of being and emptiness,
a clash of wills between what we were
and what we hope to become
And the ground beneath us,
that ground,
is made of the same dust the heavens forgot

There is a heaviness to living,
as if the cosmos had left us
a debt too immense to repay
And yet, there is also lightness,
like the fleeting breath of a leaf
defying the wind

We are a paradox:
strength and fragility,
voracity and fear—
of everything and of nothing
And still, we go on,
for the human condition is a silent pact
with the mystery of existence

II – The Invisible Currents

No one truly sees us
We are rivers flowing beneath the surface of the world,
carrying in our waters what we’ll never confess
Every smile conceals an abyss,
every word a fragile anchor
cast into an unyielding sea

There are days when the currents pull hard,
and everything in us seems to sink
On others, we are waves that stretch across the shores,
leaving traces soon erased

But then there are rare moments -
when our eyes meet another’s,
and for an instant,
the currents become clear,
secrets flow like streams,
and we realize we were never truly alone

What drives us, then?
Is it the yearning for freedom,
or the fear of vanishing?
Perhaps we are made of these invisible currents,
of the eternal sway between surrender and resistance
And yet, we endure

III – The Embrace of Eternity

In the end, everything dissolves
Houses crumble,
names are forgotten,
the stars that gave us life
vanish without a sound

But something remains:
the moment
The moment we laughed despite the pain,
the touch of a hand that held ours,
the glimmer of a gaze that saw us
beyond the masks we wear

It is in these moments that eternity reveals itself -
not as some distant promise,
but as a constant presence,
a flame burning in the now

In the end, it is the moment that matters -
the one where we choose to love,
to believe,
to hope
The moment when the entire universe
folds itself within us,
and, for a second,
we are more than dust:
we are light

This is the greatness of human existence:
not in what we conquer,
but in what we touch,
in what we transform
and what transforms us,
in what we leave behind
as a reflection of the eternal

And even when we disappear,
eternity echoes -
not in the heavens, but in the hearts
of those who still live

Epilogue

To be human is to carry the cosmos in our bones,
to feel the weight of the stars,
and, even so,
to keep laughing amidst the chaos

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Posted On: February 17, 2025
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