Purpose

We are the gifts that give long after the giving is done.

Can you love something enough to enjoy its death? To believe in it so wholeheartedly that its emaciated corpse is still enthralling?

To gaze upon it and see that in a sense it is so full, even when it’s empty. Like a water balloon, body overflowing with liquid, bloated skin and muscles, everything cascading out and out and out, but never ceasing to pour.

As if the body itself is a water source; touched with a rod and gifted with the blessing to cure a thousand parched mouths, a waterfall hidden behind pale lips. Rain granting the earth a new chance of survival behind shuttered eyelids, long eroded into darkened trenches.

The soul has left but the body keeps giving; fed to the hungry animals in the woods, entangled in the blades of grass and touches of soil, bones crafted into tools by the wary creatures who find these pearly yet sturdy sticks.

Yes, the soul has left, but that does not mean the purpose has left, too.