Although I can’t name it
I know exactly how it feels. Or maybe not exactly, not one thing in particular, but several small, true things that add up to the bigger true thing. It feels like grazing my finger with a blunt knife. Like sitting on my feet for too long. How the body forgets and we fall behind. Like walking into a room not remembering why.
Like when I was younger and would wonder how love works when it doesn’t. Like finding that first white strand on my head. Tugging on it, the panic, that urgent, dull ache. Like every time I should have known better. Like pressing on a key until I’ve started all over.
A friend asks what’s holding me back and I say, but what if I’m not unhappy, which isn’t a real answer. Maybe it’s the real question.
Sometimes I think, this is it, this is the change that would change my life, and then it passes. Like everything does.
And sometimes I think, this is my life. This is my life. That’s all there is to it—that’s the beauty and sorrow of it. I let it linger on my tongue for a minute, tasting the hands that shaped it, the ground that fed it, before it crumbles like the day and dissolves. ☁️