A brightness we could not hold

Vahan Roumelian. 'The pulse of the age,' oil on canvas. 185 × 300 cm

There was a moment.

Brief, almost imperceptible,
when the air changed shape,
when conviction outgrew the body,
and something too young to carry such weight stepped into the fire,
believing it would become language.

Not martyrdom,
not sacrifice,
but a rupture, clean and deliberate,
cut through the skin of forgetting.

They were not warriors, not saints, not fools.
Just velocity
gathered into form,
tired of waiting for the world to listen.

I used to call it courage.

Now, I hesitate.
Now, I trace the outlines of laughter they must have known.
Now, I think of the way the coffee was constantly brewing
on the stovetop by their mothers,
welcoming mourners into dim living rooms
where absence had already begun to take its shape.

What is lost when urgency becomes flesh?

And still,
still,
somewhere inside the noise,
there was a clarity sharper than justice.
A refusal to be ornamental.
A hunger to be more than echo.

Was it worth it?

I don't ask that anymore.
I only feel
the weight of what we call meaning
when the light
burns
too
fast.