i find that time
sits quietly
in the corners
where we leave it
inside the silence
we used to call night
where sound drifts softly
through the house
like children running barefoot
through warm sand
laughing
before they realize
how quickly summers disappear
i have always wanted time
to stretch farther
than it ever agreed to
i wait for mirrors in empty fields
to collapse beneath their own reflections
for certainty to fold in on itself
the way pride often does
i watch the trees bend
and i remember
that even the strongest things
learn by yielding
i sit here
the way a child waits
for their favorite song
to begin
the same way i sit
on this couch
letting the same melody
play again
and again
because life repeats itself
if we let it
and somewhere along the way
the years begin moving faster
not because time changes
but because we stop
giving it something new
to remember
i want to create
because creation slows the clock
it asks the day
to stay a little longer
i want every year
to leave fingerprints on me
the way twenty-five did
when every conversation
felt like the beginning
of another version of myself
i wanted everything then
quickly
completely
without knowing
that life was asking me
to move more slowly
now i wander here
beside the old clock
while a guitar repeats
the same familiar melody
again
and again
people call it a sad song
but i don’t think it is
it only becomes sad
when we decide
that’s what it means
a melody cannot choose
its own emotion
we tune it ourselves
the same way
we tune memory
the same way
we tune our lives
i choose to create
because creation reminds me
that i am still here
i choose happiness
not because it arrives easily
but because it is something
i practice
something i build
day after day
we become
what we return to
we become
what we tell ourselves
and i want this life
to be worth
exactly what i say it is
because in the end
meaning isn’t something we find
it’s something we leave behind