anything can be poetry if you're brave enough.
What do you say
When there is nothing to say?
What can you conclude about
What you can’t fathom?
How do you cheer someone on
When you can’t imagine their pain?
How do you thank someone
When you can’t imagine their sacrifice?
In times like these
I want for wiser words…
Words wide enough to encompass
All that was loved and lost.
to be young
is a frightening thing.
it means coming up against
all the darkest
things of life:
death
loss
grief
loneliness
despair
before you’ve had the chance
to understand what they mean.
it means facing certain facts:
the ones you love most
you must someday let go;
you will never be the child
you once were;
nor are you likely to become
what you once dreamed of being.
it means staring into your remaining years
as an unfathomable abyss
& fearing what change
what loss of current circumstance
may take place therein.
it means realizing that:
the words you least want to listen to
are those you most need to hear;
joy and loss
are in fact one and the same;
your tears are the bridge
between your most treasured moments
& the knowledge of their impermanence;
all things of this world will fade
& clinging to them cannot prolong the inevitable;
running away only brings you closer
to the thing from which you run;
& the only way for pain to end
is to feel it as deeply as you can
for as long as it wishes to be felt.
I am alive
and sometimes, being alive sucks.
Being alive means painful feelings,
unhappy endings, stupid decisions,
and days where you just want to curl up in bed and call it quits.
But who ever said being alive felt good?
You know those times when people say
“I feel so alive?”
That’s the adrenaline talking.
And it’s only pumping in their veins
because they took a risk
and are two steps away from either falling flat on their face
or crowing in triumph.
Sometimes being alive means eating ice cream even though it’s bad for you,
or listening to someone because their story moves you
even though you’re exhausted and would much rather climb into bed.
It means days where you think “I can’t do this,”
but somehow you make it through the day
even though you doubted yourself the whole time.
It’s being with people who may drive you crazy
but who are there for you in a heartbeat.
It’s that moment when your heart is breaking
and it hurts to breathe but somehow
you look at the sun and you are broken but okay
that you know you are in the middle of a really good story.
——
(I wrote this in five minutes while eating a scoop of ice cream that my rational self told me not to eat but my alive self said stop that car right now and get some ice cream and sit down and breathe.
So I did.)
face to face with the sky 