While You Are Here

No one is coming to announce your life. It began on an ordinary morning, already in progress, like rain, while you rinsed a cup and thought of something else.

Whatever you love will be taken. That is not the tragedy. The tragedy is the hand kept in the pocket, the word swallowed, the window watched so carefully that nothing was ever held.

So hold. The child, the friend, the failing dog, the mother whose number you keep not calling. Spend the whole sentence: I love you. I was wrong. Thank you. Stay. Words cost nothing now, and later you would trade the house to have said them.

You are not behind. There is no ahead — only the kettle coming to its small boil, light crossing a floor that needs sweeping, someone in the next room, still alive.

Go in. Sit down where the living are. Soon enough you will be what the light crosses. Let that be the reason, not the fear — the reason you look at everything twice: once to see it, once to let it go.