The Silence of Scales
A staircase inhales; each step remembers serpents carved in silence.
The staircase inhaled.
Every step remembered serpents once carved, their stone backs arched against time.
Moss threaded the hollows.
Pearl-light gathered in cracks.
Silence pressed close as if it, too, were carved.
A traveller placed a foot.
The step answered with a hush.
Flame from the torch leaned inward, listening.
River air climbed from below, carrying the scent of wet clay and forgotten offerings.
The traveller climbed, counting not numbers but pauses:
silence, then breath, then silence again.
With each pause, scale brightened—
as if a lidless eye had turned.
The serpent’s silence became flame.
It did not burn.
It illumined.
Pearl-light revealed hunger as devotion, not threat.
The traveller’s breath caught—half fear, half awe—
as stone shifted beneath their hand, alive yet patient.
They climbed to the landing and did not look back.
Silence rose with them, unbroken.
In that silence the scales learned to breathe again.
The staircase exhaled.
Also in Library
From Mountain to Monastery
Angkor Wat survived by learning to change its posture. Built as a summit for gods and kings, it became a place of dwelling for monks and pilgrims. As belief shifted from ascent to practice, stone yielded to routine—and the mountain learned how to remain inhabited.
Why Theravada Could Outlast Stone
Theravada endured by refusing monumentality. It shifted belief from stone to practice, from kings to villages, from permanence to repetition. What it preserved was not form but rhythm—robes, bowls, chants, and lives lived close together—allowing faith to travel when capitals fell and temples emptied.
The End of Sanskrit at Angkor
The final Sanskrit inscription at Angkor does not announce an ending. It simply speaks once more, with elegance and certainty, into a world that had begun to listen differently. Its silence afterward marks not collapse, but a quiet transfer of meaning—from stone and proclamation to practice, breath, and impermanence.
