Human beings have a complexity that makes them so beautiful and interesting to observe. The way the mind travels, almost of its own accord. How it responds to the world around it. How it builds a world within.

There are times though that we are tempted to withdraw. To admire this beauty and intricacy, and the products of it, only from a distance. Behind the glass where it cannot quite touch us. To not get mangled in the contradictions and the confusion and the madness.

But to do so is to be removed from the source. The core experience that calls art into existence and bestows upon it meaning. From the thrill that is being alive and being flawed and being moved enough by our time here in some way to feel the need to catalogue it. To share something of it with others. In connection, in memoriam of this finite thing we are all here for,
just this once.

I hear often that the people of the world
have gone soft,
but I don’t think that’s true.
I don’t think too many soft people
is a problem the world could ever have

People are hard in their hearts and in their heads,
hard the way glass is hard
and they think it makes them strong
until they realize
they’ve only made it easier for others to break them.
People are hard like bullets are hard and like knives are hard,
hard like loss is hard and like words are hard,
with hard opinions and hard perspectives,
the way that walls are hard
until someone has gone through the work
of taking them down

It’s rare, that people are soft.
Soft like things must be sometimes
to withstand an impact,
and not break.
Soft the way knowledge is soft,
the way it must be if it is to change shape,
it must be malleable.
Soft the way giving is soft
so that when we give pieces of ourselves to others
we can do so without snapping.
Soft like water is soft,
so it may bend and adapt to fill any space that needs it,
without ever losing itself,
and when it must be a force of nature,
it is that too

There is a light in me
it’s soft, and warm,
and though there have been times that I have looked the other way and stepped out into darkness
it has always been there, waiting for me to return.

I want you to know that there’s a light inside you too.
And no matter how far you find that you have drifted
it will always be there for you to come back to.
You are a beautiful, redeemable, and good thing.
You are not ever too far gone to come back
to that warm light

When the cracks grew too deep, and the tape stopped holding,
the ceramic itself began to shift
and I broke

I slid right out of myself and I knelt,
picking through the glass with sliced hands,
trying to assemble it all again
from memory that was only fading
as the days went on
without me in them

I cradled the rounded edges that were my heart
in both hands
as I looked at this heap of breath and lungs
and wondered,
how it could have ever been me.

I didn’t realize that I could never go back,
that we aren’t meant to.

That we’re supposed to build something new

The swings we once hung in still drift,
the wind whispering to them, always,
of who we were when we were young

The merry-go-round twirls
at every carnival,
its song a ghost
of memories,
floating in the night

The stars above spin around, and around,
until they blur in streaks of light
across our sky,
until we can no longer tell
which one of us
is spinning faster

And time moves many things
but more than anything
I hope it moves me,
closer to you

People are not wallets or bicycles or keys,
or shoes that you paid more money for than you should have.
They cannot be stolen from you

They can willingly leave you,
or they can willingly stand by your side

And though we may not see it in the moments they are unfolding,
both acts can lead
to something beautiful