I began where all songs do,
not with a note, but with the waiting.
In the dark hush of my mother’s womb,
where heartbeat met heartbeat,
and time had no feet.
No language yet, but something older:
a knowing, a floating,
a silence that understood everything.
Then light came like astonishment—
a world flung open with color,
with crying, with the warm grip of a finger
wrapped around mine.
And they called it joy.
And they wept too, because joy always arrives
hand in hand with the memory
that we cannot keep it.
And so I began,
not knowing the world was stitched
with both lullabies and sirens.
The sun taught me warmth.
The rain taught me to wait.
The wind taught me that strength can be silent.
In laughter, I built castles from air.
In sorrow, I planted seeds of fortitude.
There were days I danced
without asking why,
and nights I broke
without showing the cracks.
I loved—
with the fullness only a child can manage,
believing every friend was forever,
every goodbye a mistake
that time would correct.
But time does not correct.
It records.
It collects.
It watches us put ribbons on graves,
still hoping the soil might soften
and give something back.
Even then—
when the hand I held turned cold,
when breath became memory,
when the world cracked open like autumn
and I was a leaf,
spinning in grief’s quiet spiral—
even then,
some part of me whispered
hold on.
Hope is not a promise.
Hope is a habit.
We light candles not to see,
but to remember that light exists.
And somehow, I stood.
I stood in the ruins of my laughter,
brushed dust from my dreams,
took one step,
and then another.
I never knew where the strength came from.
Maybe from the brokenness itself,
from the ache that refused to forget
how love had once felt.
The heart—
what a strange and stubborn thing.
It shatters and sings in the same breath.
It holds funerals and festivals side by side.
It forgets, forgives, fractures,
and still beats out its soft rebellion.
I want to meet my heart one day—
sit across from it, palms open,
and ask, how did you do it?
How did you carry me
through every thundered silence,
every night I thought would never end?
And I want to give it
a standing ovation.
Not because it was unbreakable,
but because it broke beautifully
and still chose to love again.
Life was never promised easy.
It was only a brief.
But in that brevity,
there is music.
And in that music—
eternity.
Not the kind measured in time,
but in tenderness.
In the way we remember.
In the way we hope.
In the way we love,
and love,
and love,
even as we let go.