Idea

I am tired. The dog sleeps at my feet under the desk and I think maybe that's the better option. The first days of August are warm outside the window, but I can't fight off that small, worried voice in the back of my head that says fall is coming. It flinches at every chilly breeze, every inkling of cloud cover. You say it sits in your bones but you're starting to wonder if it's a learned fear after all, that it sits in your skin instead. After all, generations of your people have weathered those winters and survived to create you. Do you dishonor them by becoming so soft? 

You remind yourself that Novembers can be mild and delicious in New York. 

Yesterday, at the top of a hill, overlooking the Atlantic, the Mendips, the M5, I thought I am in a moment of my own creation, and it seemed such a gift. How many years was I frozen in catatonia, staring across the waters at other people, living their lives like they were allowed pursuits, thinking such allowances were not for me. 

It's strange the truths we teach ourselves to believe. 

You wonder if it's too late to believe something else.  

Worth

The days tumble from out of your hands, as they always do when you think you've bought yourself infinity. Perhaps you're a little less stressed about it these days. Maybe in the back of your mind somewhere you are making peace with yourself about your incessant imperfection. 

Maybe in the back of your mind somewhere you're starting to think perfection 
wasn't the right goal, anyway. 

You hike to the top of Glastonbury Tor, watch the English countryside spread out around you. There, the rolling hills, there, the lush hedgerows and stone cottaged villages, there the Bay and Wales behind it. Here, the land you've come to see, making itself known. The sun is bright, the sky blue, the breeze joyful. They hear your crumpled accent, ask where you're from, and you no longer worry about your crooked answers. It just is what it is. 

You long for your friends back home, in all your back homes, delight at the thought that you'll be seeing them soon again. There's a moment just before getting what you long for that is the sweetest thing in all the world, and lately it feels like you're living that moment over, and over, and over. 

Well, said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop 
and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing 
to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it 
which was better than when you were, but he didn't know 
 what it was called. 

You know there will be fall again one day, 
there will be Darkness
and fear
and the unbearable lightness of 
no longer wanting to live

but it is not today. 

For a brief moment 
you are invincible,

and if this is the reward you get for
being alive

then alright.