Telos

You arrive as raw marble, every form sleeping in your veins. The chisel terrifies you: each strike is irrevocable, each cut the death of some self you might have become. The first strike is always loss. A wound that will not close. Chips fall. Dust blooms on your tongue. The smooth surface is gone. But deep in the pale wound, a line appears – one that was always there. Strike again. Line becomes limb, limb becomes stance, stance becomes gaze. You stop. The gaze finds yours. You cut away the stone to find what was standing there all along – waiting, as you were, to meet you.