What’s the Beauty, What’s the Ache?

I keep asking myself this.

Some days, I think I know.

Other days, it slips through my fingers like silk.

Too tender to hold, too sharp to ignore.

Maybe I’m not looking for answers.

Maybe I just want to sit with the asking.

What’s the beauty?

It’s not always soft. Sometimes it slices.

It’s the color that clings to your fingers long after the brush is dropped.

The scent of something you loved now bottled and orphaned on a shelf.

It’s a laugh caught mid-sob. A memory that blooms without permission.

Beauty is the bruise you press just to remember it's healing.

It’s the note you never sent. The gallery wall in your mind that no one ever saw.

It’s the morning light that slips in like forgiveness.

The way honey catches the sun like it’s trying to glow through the ache.

It’s your son’s old slippers by the door. Still waiting.

Beauty isn’t clean.

It’s layered.

Torn at the edges.

It arrives while you're looking away,and leaves just when you're ready to hold it.

And what’s the ache?

It’s the ghost hand you still reach for in the dark.

The dinner you made for someone who never came.

It’s a song that hits too hard on a day you thought you were fine.

Ache is the silence between two people who used to tell each other everything.

It’s the dream that wilted while you were tending someone else’s.

It’s the art you were too tired to finish.

It’s opening your mouth to speak and changing your mind.

It’s softness that never found a landing place.

It’s joy that showed up late, knocking on a door you already locked.

But ache doesn’t mean you're lost. Ache means you remember.

You risked.

You loved hard enough to miss something that deeply.

So what if you carry both?

What if beauty and ache aren’t enemies but twin wounds that shimmer under different light?

What if the ache carved out space for beauty to echo louder?

What if your softness isn’t a flaw but evidence of survival?

You ask what they are.

But maybe the better question is—

What did they leave behind in you?

They left salt.

And honey.

And a heart that keeps painting even when the colors don’t make sense.

A woman who still shows up to the canvas even when she’s made of questions.

A mother who still kisses her child even when she feels like disappearing.

An artist who whispers:“I don’t have to be whole to make something holy.”

And maybe that’s the answer: You carry both because you were never meant to feel just one thing.

— Dura Ki Hana