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On this luckiest day of the year,
I may look at me and say,
Just imagine it.
The glint of the blade,
The blood on your skin,
On this beautiful spring day.
The sky a pale periwinkle blue.
The endings must be as beautiful
As the beginnings, in life, you know.
And I might say to myself,

No.
Don’t you know how much
It took to be here, and
Don’t you know how much
It means to still exist?
How many endings I had
To try to see it better?
How I shielded myself
By being intentionally, incredibly dumb
So I would not know how to die?

When you treat every day like your last,
But the lasts just keep coming,
You realize how much life can mean.
That is, it does mean nothing some ways.
Those signs you see in pavement
Are just rocks and not fated messages.
They are not symbolic of the dead
Forced to be stepped on and covered in gum.
Reading a book backwards will not
Bring the same knowledge as if you read it
forwards.
But those rocks can mean something.
In their warmth on your toes,
In their haphazard designs,
In their muddled hues in the concrete.
In their path toward the bus
Your ride to school and to see your loved ones.

Do not be scared of freedom,
I would say, staring out
Upon the sky I once thought
Was out to get me.
You are safe here,
In your own skin,
With your own eyes,
And your own two feet.
Do what you always wished
You could when you were a kid,
But never found the ability to.
Be free, my child. Be free.

3.5.22

©KeenEvenings