Traces of Time, Pages of Years

I stacked them today. Ten books. My ten books.

At first glance, they are ordinary. Just paper and ink. Yet they carry years of me, pressed into pages I might have forgotten otherwise. They are not trophies. They are not marks of traditional success. There are no bestseller lists, no fanfare. What they are is a quiet trace of time. A quiet trace of me.

We all leave traces, whether we notice or not. Some are visible, some vanish as quickly as they appear. A book is one kind of trace, but so is a conversation, a gesture, a song, a memory that lingers in someone else’s mind. Most of the time, we do not know what remains. We just live, and in living, we scatter fragments of ourselves.

For me, writing has always been that scattering. There were moments I thought about stopping, about keeping my words to myself. And still, something kept pulling me back. Even when it felt pointless. Even when someone told me, recently, that I should stop with this nonsense hobby and put my time to better use. That stung, because writing has long since become second nature. Not something extra, not a pastime, but part of how I exist. Part of my days, part of my fabric.

The books themselves are both private and public. They are mine, but they are also out there, waiting for whoever might stumble across them. It’s not about fame, or recognition, but the possibility of being found, the possibility that one line might meet someone else at the right time.

I like holding them, these books, in my hands. The smell, the weight, the fact that they take up space. They remind me that traces can be tangible. They remind me that persistence leaves a mark, even if the world is not watching. Even if there are books that are invisible or don’t even have a title on their spine.

When I look at this stack, I see time. I see proof that I was here, and that I kept going. These books are not loud, but they endure in their own quiet way. A bit of a reflection of us all, I like to believe.

Maybe that is all any of us can hope for: to leave behind traces, however small, that say we lived, we felt, we created, we mattered.

Yes, we mattered. 🙏