What Is Possible?

A Prose Poem

The night is aglow with a heavy sense of sadness. And relief. I am saying goodbye. Goodbye to a year that never could be. Goodbye to a year that was. Two roads before me, still diverged. Two sides of me, still tense as ever.

I have only scratched the surface, I have merely seen a glimpse of the depths. Next year will be different, I say over and over again. This time, perhaps I believe it.

I want nothing more than to make art, to be as simple or complex as I want to be at any given moment — it doesn’t matter what the world around me says I should or shouldn’t do, I’ve given it too much credence and got nothing to show for it.

I want to wander. Aimlessly if it means I will find myself that way. I want to go as far off the script as possible and laugh in the faces of scorn, the ones from an invisible crowd that still terrifies me now. I want to yell upon a mountaintop as if nobody could hear me. I want to rest in the waters of my soul and feel redemption sinking in. I want to watch the birds fly and write how I feel when I see them embark on their journeys and see if they mirror my own. I want to spend quiet afternoons listening to a masterpiece all the way through without stopping to tune into mindless distractions.

I want to feel subtle shifts in my spirit, day by day, in the little things. I want to know what lightness feels like again. I want to wake up each morning without the heaviness in my chest. I wonder what it’s like, for once, to live without dread, without fear of what anybody says about how I choose to show up for myself.

And all those things are possible. There is still time. Not much of it, but it is still there. An awakening is nearer than ever, but I need to accept it the way I need to accept who I am.

I don’t think I lost myself. I think I know where she’s been all along.

But she still needs to be set free.