The Wind That Remembers My Name — in reply to a question never fully answered #poetry

Do you have a quote you live your life by?
Yes. But it isn’t written. It walks. It hums.
It once hung from my grandmother’s window in the form of red chillies and cracked glass.
It once arrived in your voice when you said, “Stay until the stars feel warm.”

I don’t carve my gospel into stone.
I tattoo it into the air between my fingers.
You asked me this on a platform—where the train didn’t arrive,
and my answer was the echo of a crow, mid-scream,
refusing to be just another shadow on the wire.

Do I live by a quote? I live by the friction of fireflies.
By the silence between breaths when you read me Neruda with your eyes closed.
I live by the memory of our palms pressed to a foggy mirror
before we knew how to ask anything without trembling.

You don’t understand yet—do you?

This isn’t about the words.
It’s about the weight they carry when no one is listening.
The way they keep pulsing even after you leave the room.

There was once a monk who whispered to the moon:
“I follow the river, not the map.”
And I thought—yes. That. That is my blood’s dialect.
That is the cathedral of bone I kneel inside when nothing else makes sense.

You told me your quote was “Live and let live,”
but I watched you pull petals off daisies to test your fate.
You confessed your quote was “Time heals all,”
but your calendar was a graveyard of what-ifs
and your nights clutched old letters like rosaries.

I’m not blaming you.

I’m just saying I’ve seen people
build entire religions out of fear
and call it resilience.

I've stitched my life together
with threads I stole from cloudbursts and bitten tongues.
My anthem?
“Survive—but beautifully.”

It’s not famous. It’s not printed on T-shirts.
It’s not trending. But it’s mine.
And sometimes, yours too—when you forget how magnificent you look in despair.

I live by the way grass grows after wildfires.
By the moment you forgave your father without knowing it.
By the way we laughed the day everything fell apart.

Some mornings, the quote becomes a crowbar.
Other days, a lullaby.
Sometimes it shows up as an old coat
smelling like rain and the person I once was
when I believed in forever.

Once, I wrote my own quote:
"If you can't stay soft, stay real."
You wrote underneath it:
"If you can't stay real, at least stay."

We are building scripture out of skin cells and sighs,
do you see that?

I live by the sparks.
The ones you can’t bottle.
The ones that ignite
when you touch someone with your eyes before your hands.
The quote I live by
is shaped like you walking away,
but looking back.

It is shaped like silence that sings.

It is made of
“I’m not okay, but I’m still here.”
It echoes in late night tea,
burnt toast,
lost gloves,
and the sound of traffic from a twelfth-story apartment
where I learned how to breathe through grief.

You want something tattooable, don’t you?

A tidy little phrase to wear like armor.
But life isn’t tidy.
And my quote has teeth.
It has wings.
It has a thousand names and none.
It bites when I lie to myself.
It sings when I’m honest in the dark.

So I’ll give you the closest thing:

"Let it matter. Let it break you open. Let it rebuild you better than before."

That’s the quote.
That’s the whisper I live by.
It’s not always beautiful,
but it’s always true.

And when I forget,
you remind me—
not with words,
but with the way you hold space for me
without folding me into your expectations.

You are the quote some days.
You are the reminder that poetry breathes,
not just bleeds.

So no, I don’t have a quote.
I have a pulse that rhymes
with thunder and forgiveness.
I have a voice
that once got lost
but now returns with birds
each time I say your name.

Do you have a quote you live your life by?

Yes.
It begins when you ask me that question,
and ends
when you stop waiting for it to rhyme.