Bright Lit Nights and Days Without the Sun
A year ago,
the earth under my feet felt familiar.
The soil soft, the wind warm,
a rhythm I could trust,
the pulse of the world in sync with my heart.
Now, I look back
and it’s as if that woman,
that version of me,
has already been buried
beneath a forest of new roots.
She is a sapling turned into mulch,
feeding the ground I walk on now.
I have changed like the seasons,
drifting from spring's bright hope
to autumn's soft surrender,
from summer's reckless fire
to winter's quiet frost.
Change is not a line;
it’s a spiral,
turning in on itself,
filling me with both fire and frost
at once.
I used to chase change,
like a river chasing the sea,
curious and terrified in equal measure.
Now I stand,
watching the river carve its path
through the landscape of my soul,
leaving marks that will not wash away.
There is beauty in this
but also a kind of devastation,
like a storm that clears the sky
but leaves the earth scarred.
The rainbow does not appear
until the storm has passed,
and even then,
it is only a promise,
a shimmer on the horizon
that cannot hold the weight
of all that came before it.
I think the woman I was a year ago
would not recognize me,
but she might understand the silence.
She might smile,
not with surprise,
but with knowing -
the way a forest knows its own cycles,
its roots stretching deeper
after each fire.
I carry the weight of loss
like mountains carry snow
grief piling up in heavy drifts,
but under it,
there is still green,
still life pushing through the frost.
I am happier now,
but happiness is not a warm sun on a clear day.
It is the moonlight on a winter’s night,
cold and bright,
shining down on the same earth
that holds both flowers and thorns.
There is a quietness now,
the kind of stillness that settles
after a storm has torn through the trees,
leaving broken branches in its wake,
but also new growth,
tiny buds sprouting from the wreckage.
I am still the same at my core –
the same deep roots that stretch
down into the soil,
but I’ve grown taller,
wider,
more complex,
the way a tree’s rings tell the story
of years weathered by both sun and storm.
I feel the weight of the world differently now.
I see the beauty in the cracks –
the way light pours through broken windows,
the way a river does not apologize for its bends.
I carry sadness in me –
like an old oak carries its gnarled limbs,
but it is not a burden.
It is a part of me,
woven into my bones,
as natural as the changing of the tides.
Life is like this,
forever pulling apart and coming together,
forever shifting and reshaping,
like the earth itself,
who doesn’t ask for permission
to grow, to change, to break.
And somewhere in the midst of all this,
both the wildfires and the rain,
I have found peace,
the kind of peace that comes
when the winds settle
and the earth stops spinning
long enough for me to catch my breath.
I don’t think I’m better.
Or worse.
Just more rooted,
more fluid,
more awake to the way the world moves
in me,
around me,
through me.
And isn’t that what life is?
A patchwork of seasons,
of rainstorms and sunrises,
of flowers blooming from cracks in the earth,
and stars shining in a sky
that sometimes forgets to sleep?