The End of Summer

I am tired.

I am tired of the lights and the lilt and the screens and the quickness of the night.

I am tired. I am tired of the wind and the winding and the racing and the quests.

I have journeyed to the faraway mountain.
I have looked inside the mouth of the dragon that was my own fear.

It is true that I am grown.

That I have vistas wide open to me.

That I have a memory of being the star that turned into the constellations that turned into the molecule that ate and swam and existed its way upstream until it became my eye.

It is true that I see miracles everywhere.
That the bees love the allium with their fuzzy little bodies.

That my loved ones watered the plants while I was away.

But in my body, I am tired.

A mountain of grief does not disappear because you see the light.

The tunnel remains dark.

Like a cave holding a shadow.

I remain grateful for this sensation of being human.

Letting gravity teach me what it is to be held down to the earth.

There is no one outside of me I could ever trust to tell me who I am.

Trust me, I have tried.

Mirror after mirror after mirror

I see the incomplete picture when I look through someone else’s eyes.

The tired in me is holy.

It says there was something here you loved.

It says there was a dream you had that ended in a disappointment.

It says, these things happened, and these things mattered, and we won’t forget.

The treasure is found sometimes on a mid-afternoon walk.

Other times, after digging a hole so deep you think you’ll end up on the other side of the world.

The hole you dig is as beautiful as the treasure.

The body so tired is as beautiful as all the stars in the dark sky.

This world asks you to function.
But your heart asks you to be whole.

Sometimes you can’t do both at once.

Sometimes you have to trust the tiredness is a signal you’re alive. And sing to it a lullaby.

Sing.

Sing.

Sing.