Time is Never Wrong

You cannot outrun it.
You cannot stay ahead of its reach.
It was already waiting for you
in the room where you were born.

Everything is brand new
until the moment it is not.
Until it begins to yellow,
become torn and worn,
until the thing you held so tightly
bears the shape of your own hand
and nothing more.

Over time you gather
this collection of layers:
dust and damage,
nostalgia and love,
pain pressed flat between the pages
of a life you swore
you were only just beginning.

It all starts to tear.
It all starts to tatter.
Even the sacred things.
Especially the sacred things.

And you cannot run from it.
Even on your fastest day,
your very fastest day,
you cannot run faster.
Time is not chasing you.
It does not need to.
It plays the long game,
and it has never once been wrong.

So don’t be afraid.
Don’t be frightened.
It’s gonna be alright.

Life’s things flare up into the sky
like diamonds flung against the darkness,
like every bright and burning thing
you ever loved rising at once,
then slowly fading, coming down
like fireworks as they fizzle out
into the night,
trailing sparks
that look so much like memories
on their way to the ground.

And that’s okay.

Pictures become yellow
and torn at the edges,
and you realize one day
you are holding the only copy
of a moment no one else remembers.

Bodies fade and fail.
You can’t run as fast.
You can’t run as far.
You can’t lift as much.
The world does not grow heavier.
You grow lighter.

And the things you cherish:
favorite shoes, your grandmother,
even the food you loved so much,
the taste of something
that once meant everything,
sometimes slip out of your own reach
like a name you can’t recall
in the middle of the night.

You prepare the young
to have options and choices,
to experience things
you will never experience again.
You hand them the world
with hands that already know
what it costs to hold it.

But as you get older
those things slip away,
and it’s okay.
You’re gonna be okay.

You gaze now
into the inevitable darkness,
knowing you are closer to it
than you have ever been.
Closer than yesterday.
Closer than this morning.
All the mementos and memories,
the wishes and the dreams,
the small unbearable tenderness
of everything you wanted to keep,
you can’t have them anymore.
You can’t have them at all.

And still.
It’s gonna be okay.
You’re gonna be okay.

Don’t be afraid of the loss.
Don’t be afraid of the darkness.
It is only the other side
of every light you ever loved.

Don’t be afraid of change
as it grabs hold of you and takes you.
Don’t be afraid of losing the control
you never really had to begin with,
and what a strange mercy that is,
to finally stop pretending.

Fill yourself with love and light
and memory,
dreams of all that you loved
and enjoyed,
every meal and every voice
and every door you walked through
not knowing it was the last time.

Breathe in the unchangeable,
undying energy of the universe,
the same breath that moved through you
on your first day
and will move through the trees
long after your name
has left every living mouth.

Now, find peace in your own soul.
You were never meant to hold it all.
You were only ever meant to love it
as it passed through your hands.

Don’t be afraid.
We’re gonna be alright.