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

So often we wish for the workday to end.
To blink up at the unyielding clock
and be home

The afternoon incites a smile,
the morning, a groan

What we don’t realize in these moments
where we will the clock to move
is that it’s not just our shift we are asking to pass us by.
It’s easy to forget that we’re there
five days a week
9 hours a day, sometimes more.
That when we get home we’re tired.
That all the time we do have to ourselves
moves quickly, too,
no matter what pieces of it we are able to
hold onto in the moments that matter more.

Our children’s hair is longer
—It will only keep growing
Our parent’s skin is thinner, than it used to be
—the grooves of their eyes can only get deeper,
as will your own

And yet we beg time to move us,
we thrust fuel into the already
speeding engine of our lives and once it has momentum it does not slow for the gaps between.

The tide, for us, is always coming in.
How much time will you offer up?
How much shoreline will you give away
to the sea

you can look into the mirror and say
“these are all the different people I was today,”
so you can move your hands over your chest
and hear them reply,
“but this is the only one you ever need to be”