To Inhabit

Did you know,
the whole world is an exhibition
of you?
Every crowd, every face,
an echo,
an elongated trace
of your own yearning:
the half-worn guises,
the unfinished selves
you never had time to inhabit?

Did you know,
you, the collective of finites,
are constantly completing
the lost portrait of perfection
once buried in selfdom,
with the brushstrokes
of your becoming?

Did you know—
colors do not exist
until your gaze unveils them?
That beauty is not a thing,
but the way
you behold
another soul?

And time,
time gives you
both life and death.
The dead, they know.

And the moment
you stop glancing at your watch,
you are already
being mummified.