Across Lifetimes

If the soul is destined to wander through lifetimes, how cruel it is that we are left to feel the faint echoes of who we once were, always just out of reach. How many stand before a painting, their chest tightening with an ache they cannot name, not knowing that the hand that created it once trembled with their own longing? How many hear a melody that splinters them in places they thought long healed, every note a ghost of a song they composed in a life they’ve been forced to forget? How many clutch a book so tightly it might crumble, its words carving into them like a blade—because they once bled to write them?

Imagine the unbearable agony of recognizing pieces of yourself scattered across time, knowing they can never truly be yours again. And then imagine love—how many times have we found them, only to lose them again? How many lifetimes have we spent searching for a face, a voice, a touch, with nothing but the hollow ache of their absence to guide us? And when, by some miracle, we find them once more, does it ever fill the void? Or is the joy only a fleeting balm, a momentary reprieve before the weight of every lifetime spent apart crashes back down?

And what of the poets? How many stand trembling before a line of verse that feels like it was torn from their own soul, unable to comprehend why it leaves them breathless? How many find themselves in graveyards, drawn to a name they do not know but cannot bear to leave, their fingers tracing the letters like a wound they can never heal? Is the pain one of longing, of pride, or of mourning for all the pieces of themselves that lie buried there?

Perhaps this is the tragedy of existence: to leave remnants of ourselves behind, scattered like shards of glass, so sharp and painful that even in finding them, we bleed. To be both the seeker and the lost, forever chasing fragments of a whole that will never exist. To ache for what we once were, to grieve for the lives we’ve lost, to carry the weight of a thousand selves we can never reclaim. And in those moments—when a painting breaks us, when a melody shatters us, when a name leaves us undone—we are reminded of a truth that cuts deeper than any blade: we are not just searching for meaning. We are searching for pieces of ourselves we will never fully find. And no matter how far our souls wander, how many lifetimes we live, that emptiness will remain.