A Quieter Combustion

To exist is to let the heart beat

without polling the room,

the lungs opening the windows of the body

each morning,

even when the body resists.

Existence is autonomous.

A mechanism faithful to its design.

A clock committed to its orbit.

But living

is another phenomenon.

Living is choosing sensation

when anesthesia would be efficient.

Loving with full knowledge of fracture.

Continuing to create

after failure has suggested inertia.

To exist is to survive the days.

To live is to move through them

with your signal still transmitting.

Biology keeps you upright.

Poetry alters your momentum.

There are those who exist for decades

like sealed systems—

breathing,

working,

sleeping,

repeating—

laughter archived in a drawer.

Heart fully functional.

Soul in airplane mode.

And there are those who live.

Scarred.

Fearful.

Sometimes chaotic.

Yet pulsating.

Living is not perfection.

It is amplitude.

The conversion of routine into ritual.

Of error into data.

Of falling into forward motion.

You can exist by inertia.

Living requires participation.

When life reduces you to mechanism,

something in you resists being only parts.

To exist is biology.

To live is poetry.

One is organism.

The other—

a quieter combustion.