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Ascendance and decline are collapsed into one stubborn motion, where refusing to quit makes rise and fall indistinguishable.

The fragment works because it is so stripped down: rise and fall are not opposites but paired conditions of persistence. "It is your" leaves ownership raw and unfinished, as if responsibility cannot even be grammatically completed. Not quitting is the single act that fuses glory and collapse into the same line.

Six-line aphorism: 'Your ascendance / Your decline / It is your / Not quitting / makes them / the same.' Refusal to quit as the equalizer of rise and fall.