Beware of Consequences of Asking Why

The rainbow 🌈 touched the pot of gold—
somewhere to my left,
beyond raindrop-laden leaves,
trembling on the trees.
It all felt magical.

But then I asked—why?
Why is it so magical?

I asked why—
perhaps because I was growing older,
and death felt nearer.
Or because I’d slipped
into that annoying habit children have—
asking why,
to unravel.

Or maybe the day itself
had turned inward,
caught in gale-force winds
of existential reckoning—
stripping everything in its path
down to the bare bones of essence.

Asking why—
broke the magic—
just as it had broken
on a day long past,
when the Murano vase,
the one you had brought home from Venice,
and were very careful unwrapping,
slipped from my fingers.

Its delicate glass—
shattered across the floor,
and in the fragments,
the overhead lamp scattered itself
into a thousand reflections.

In those reflections,
I first glimpsed a universal truth:
permanence is a myth—
it is no more real
than the pot of gold
at the end of a rainbow.

Watching those thousand reflections,
I had also wondered—
why it is so?