We build temples out of paychecks.
Altars of leather seats and square footage.
We hang diplomas like saints on the wall and call it arrival.
The hungry years.
The proving.
The more, the almost, the finally.
We gnaw the hours down to bone for things that will forget our names the moment we stop breathing.
And then we arrive.
The door.
It does not knock.
It does not wait for you to be ready.
It swings open mid-sentence, mid-ambition, mid-prayer.
What you carried won't fit through.
What you owned already belongs to someone else.
The house will sell.
The car will rust.
Your name will leave their mouths by winter.
Only this remains:
The wound you left in someone.
The debt they still carry.
The silence where your voice used to be.
Death doesn't care what you built.
It walks through your temples like smoke.
And you.
You go through that door with nothing but the weight of what you did to people when you thought you had time.