A tortoise doesn’t only carry its home on its back. It carries time.
Field Notes
Every raised ring is a season the shell decided to keep. Scratches cross through older scratches, dust settles into the grooves, and the hardest parts are slowly softened by simply continuing to live. I wonder whether we do something similar—saving places, people, fear, tenderness, and entire former versions of ourselves somewhere inside what protects us. Perhaps our armor is not separate from our history. Perhaps it is history, carried forward.