The Legacy I Leave Is Not a Name

I am not marble.
I am not memory chiselled in eulogy stone.
I am the laugh in the throat of a stranger,
the whisper between two unlikely friends,
the rustle of a page in a book never finished—
but held.

What is the legacy I want to leave behind?
I ask it not as a funeral dirge,
but as a living dance.
I ask it in paint flung sideways on a Tuesday afternoon,
in the giggle of a child who tells a joke with no punchline
and yet—it punches.

I want to leave behind footprints that glow at midnight
only when you’re barefoot
and kind.
I want to be the skipped stone that bounced farther
because someone else dared to throw it.
Not the stone, but the bounce.
Not the echo, but the hush after.

I want to be
the breath between two lines of poetry
that no one dares publish—
too raw, too radiant,
too true to be trapped between quotation marks.

Yes, I want my legacy to be unquotable.
Let it slip through academic fingers
and land in the mud of meaning,
where the worms are making letters of their own.

I don’t want a statue.
I want moss to grow where my thoughts once lay.
I want beetles to carry my words in their husks,
to be misinterpreted gloriously
by children building universes out of bottle caps
and questions.

Let my legacy be:
I didn’t shrink.
I didn’t carve myself into manageable silence.
I wore my loud like linen.
Light. Wrinkled. Breathable.

I want to be the comma in someone's self-doubt
that pauses just long enough to let them rewrite the sentence.
I want to be the unpaid compliment
that circles back like a boomerang
and hits someone
right in the self-worth.

Let me be the side street no GPS recommends
but where the jasmine grows
and someone is always humming
an off-key lullaby.

I want my legacy to be
the awkward metaphor that made someone
believe in their own chaos.
I want to be the typo in a holy book
that made someone laugh instead of kneel.

I want to leave behind
open windows in houses no longer haunted.
Spoons with stories.
Shoes with purpose.
Not to be remembered—
but to be relived.

Yes, let someone wear my courage like a hand-me-down
stitched with uneven seams
and stories in the pocket.

Let them say:
“She wasn’t always right.
But she was real in a way
that scared the polite out of people.”

I want to leave behind
not legacy—but legacies
plural
like pebbles scattered in a thousand streams
each carrying a shimmer
of how I showed up:
Barefoot. Curious. Unapologetically strange.

Let me be remembered
in the salad someone finally dared to salt with their own hands.
In the kite flown with no string.
In the notes of a voice message never sent
but composed at 2 a.m.
with love, love, love—
and a little leftover soup.

Let me be the unfinished song
that makes someone start humming
their own.

I want to be the silence
that doesn’t hurt.
The room that doesn’t judge.
The crack in the rulebook
where the wildflowers grow.

Don’t name a day after me.
Name a question.
Something like:
"Where does your fire rest when it’s raining?"
or
"What does your shadow dream of at dawn?"

I want to leave behind permission.
Permission to be softer
than the world ever taught.
Permission to dance
badly
beautifully
on bruised feet.

Let me not be legacy,
but liberty—
loose and loud.
A freedom that never signs its name
but leaves glitter in its wake.

Let someone trip over my laughter
and fall into their own joy.
Let my legacy be
the stranger you helped
because you remembered
how it felt when no one did.

I want to be the soup stirred by a thousand hands
none of them mine—
but seasoned with my questions.

What is the legacy I want to leave behind?
Not answers.
But doors.

Unlocked.
Unlabeled.
Opening.

Always opening.

And behind each door,
a mirror that says:
"Yes. You too."