VALOR

i think that maybe there's something waiting for us in the most patient fashion. in wording much less ominous, maybe we can learn to be aware of the sunlight on our skin, and feel like we've earned it. i can't see your orbit, your spinning dance, your song on a vinyl record. of course we can't see it, but we can all feel it just as much as you. and that thing waiting for us isn't death or anything like it. because that will come about slowly and gently, like a last kiss on your forehead from an elderly loved one. of course death will come, but not now! what's waiting for us is some sort of feeling not a single one of us has felt. this satisfactory urge to just hug the sun and thank it. "thank you so, so much for shining down on me even when i squint my eyes at you. no, i'm not angry, and i know you always think i am. if i stare too long, you'll fade too fast. thank you for being constant, thank you for always rising. thank you for giving me every new chance." we can say something along those lines when we feel it, you and i. and i don't know when it's coming, but it is. and i can't tell you to be patient, but you'll wait. there will be a single moment in time, maybe just before death, that you feel like you've earned everything good in your life, and deserved everything bad. in that single moment, you will know what it's like to be given back to the earth. you will lie down softly in the blades of grass and they will overtake you. not because it's more powerful or so eager to have you, but because it's finally feeling your love. it can't help itself, it's so ready to thank you. you'll sink into the soil as your eyes close, and it will fill each and every void inside of you. you will never know the solitude of emptiness again. you will act as a seed. you can choose what you want to be for the first time in your life. you can choose who you want to grow and bloom into forever and always. i would pick an apple tree, and you would pick a rose bush. and there would be absolutely no one to adore us other than the sun and all its patterns of weather.

r.k.