February 19
My house is ashes, my goods are gone, / where chest once stood and table. / And yet — my treasure does not lie in the smoke, / it lies where fire can touch nothing.
Upon the Burning of Our House (freely rendered)
Listening mode
My house is ashes, my goods are gone, / where chest once stood and table. / And yet — my treasure does not lie in the smoke, / it lies where fire can touch nothing.
When you lose something, others are often quick to say that what matters most is still there. Usually they're right. That is exactly why the sentence is so hard to bear. It skips a stretch you haven't yet walked yourself.
Because things are rarely just things. Attached to an object are a movement of the hand, a habit and an order you followed without noticing. When it's gone, you keep reaching into empty air for days. What you've lost often shows itself only in these movements, not on a list.
Even so, at some point a strange lightness may take you by surprise. It isn't that what you lost has stopped mattering to you. Rather, you notice that some of what matters to you never lived in an object. It was only lodged there, like a guest you would never have mistaken for the room while it still stood.
When you arrive at this, they may be the same words someone said to you back then. Only now they come from the other direction.
