It wants the admission that you were never owned
by the title,
that the craft did not love you back,
that being at the top did not protect you
from being hollowed.
Not skill.
Not legacy.
Not the fragile mythology of greatness.
What remains is attention.
A sharpened seeing.
The capacity to witness without conquering.
To stay without extracting.
You are not required to replace what is gone.
You are required to stop pretending
that it can be replaced.
The herald fades,
but the world does not end.
It waits, quietly,
for you to learn how to belong to it
without being announced.
