becoming nothing, still becoming

To be light

feels like being in relation.

And to be nothing,

I’m learning it might just mean returning,

quietly, in ways we don’t always notice.

Water moves through the room

the way memory does

in shifts.

Air, then mist, a small puddle on the floor,

and then it becomes something else again.

Whatever shape it takes,

it still carries a part of where it’s been.

I placed these vessels around the house

without a real plan.

Maybe I was hoping time might gather in them,

the way it gathers in things we keep.

Sometimes it lingers.

Sometimes it slips away

before I even realize.

Glissant says totality is the obstacle.

I try to understand that.

So I let things remain unfinished,

soft around the edges,

letting the mist blur what I thought was fixed.

Opacity feels like a kind of kindness

the right not to be fully seen,

or to step back

when being seen feels too heavy.

Dōgen writes that every being

is its own time.

When the mist rises,

I wonder what time it belongs to,

and why it never quite matches mine.

Maybe that mismatch

is part of its honesty.

He also says life and death

aren’t two different paths

just two sides of the same breath.

I think of that

as the vapor lifts into the air

and becomes something

I can’t hold.

Vuong writes that the body

is like a doorway.

Some days I feel that

open, closed,

then open again

and the mist moves through

before I can decide

what I am in that moment.

A small puddle forms on the floor.

It doesn’t reflect much.

But it feels true

like something returning

in the way it only knows how.

When the water leaves,

it doesn’t exactly leave.

It becomes the room,

the air I breathe,

the next condensation.

If I’m honest,

I feel I’m a vessel with cracks.

Things leak through me

grief, memory, love.

Maybe that’s what makes room

for what’s next.

Rumi calls it the zero circle, 

the moment you disappear

into what already holds you.

I don’t know if I’m there,

but the mist seems closer

to understanding it better than I am.

Living opaquely

feels like living lightly 

leaving a trace

instead of a mark.

Everything here is still becoming.

Nothing stays long enough

to keep a name.

And yet the room

keeps filling

with a presence

I can’t quite explain.

Maybe evaporating

is another way of saying

I’m still here.

Just somewhere else.