erosion
“Time isn’t the enemy of beauty, but one of its collaborators.”
Beauty is not given to us complete or unmarred. It is not something that arrives from some transcendent realm of ideal forms. It emerges from the wear and tear of the world. From being entangled with everyone and everything we hold dear.
Beauty is an encounter.
Beauty is the slow work of being shaped by contact. Intimate rituals of shared erosion. The way that water leaves a line of kisses across a rock face in tender paths of love and want and longing carved into the very nature of our hearts and souls.
We bear the marks of our being here.
Every blemish, every flaw, is proof that some part of the world touched us long enough to leave a trail. Each one a testament to our persistent onward-ness. To our care, our compassion, our ability to endure. Our scars are the letters writ large: “I am still here.”
What we describe as resilience is really devotion. A commitment to our willingness to be worn down by what we love, and to call the wearing beautiful.
May you let yourself be shaped by what you love.
May you wear your marks without apology.
May you keep writing the letters, however slowly, that spell out the phrase: I am still here.
In case no one’s told you today, I love you with all my everything.
***special thanks to the ever-amazing Charity Whan, her poem “Fun House”, and her accompanying IG caption, for inspiring this writing.
So much beauty! The words, the collages, all of it.
Oooh I love the second one. That leaf!