Train

An hour into discussing your childhood trauma with the bartender (who claims that listening to patron's sorrows is not something she does, despite her profession), a young man hops down the steps to the bar. The Irish accent says he's here for training. He shakes your hand. Maybe you seem important, maybe your piles of papers make you seem like you belong to the bar, and to be frank, at this point you sort of do. 

The trick to anything, you've learned, is time. To relationships, to knowledge, to love. You cannot fast track it, cannot breeze past the baby steps. You don't have to impress with your power moves, you just have to show up. Return, return, return. Look people in the eye now and then, nod. Lace your running shoes and just acknowledge the road. Return to your manuscript even when you think you've been away too long, and are ashamed to hold it again. Read your poetry word by word by word until it multiplies and branches out around you. Walk these city streets until you don't remember what it felt like not to know its air in your lungs. 

Time escapes us and it feels like a loss, like sand running between our fingers and a life slipping away, but it is the opposite, I promise. Time adds up and layers and builds a life, fortifies your synapses, creates your miracles. Time is not a thing lost, but a life gained. Say it louder for the people in the back 

Time is not a thing lost

but a whole damn life

gained.