Carved Into the Silence

It is 3:15 am. The house is holding its breath, and for once, I am not trying to fill the silence with noise. There is a specific kind of weight to things that have been here longer than us. We spend our lives trying to leave a mark, scratching our names into the surface of things, hoping that if we carve deep enough, we might finally be remembered. But the stone does not care for our names. It only knows the slow, patient erosion of time. We are so temporary, yet we build as if we are eternal. We look for permanence in places that were never meant to hold us. I wonder if the stone feels the weight of our hands, or if it simply waits for us to finish our work and leave. When the sun rises, we will go back to pretending we are in control of our own history. But in the dark, the mountain knows better. What happens to a memory when there is no one left to hold it?