Legacies

Maybe we are not afraid of death

But we fear our very own name 

Being plucked from out of thin air,

Of the silence surrounding a single thing

That is just no longer there.

Because we can never really know

About the life span of a single sound,

Or how many years after a body stops

That their names will truly stick around.

Maybe it goes on for future generations

And it echoes one last time, 

Then never,

Until the space that it had once filled is

Eventually replaced,

But is unknown and lost forever.

Or maybe there is another way

After it lives and we all fade.

I believe that is the reason as to why

So many of us tend to write our names

Inside most of the books that we own

And anything that we have ever made

It is a small portion of remembrance

Within a world that is likely to forget,

And the taste of who we were

Rest upon the lips of people 

That we have probably never even met.

But I hope they will stumble on the stories

That we have once dearly loved 

Or maybe just worn out with age.

So I believe that is where they will find

What it is that we will actually have left.

So there our name appears on the cover page

And for just one brief moment,

It is as if we had literally 

Been beaten to death,

And that it is in the whisper 

Of those words

That we have even taken 

Yet another breath.