There are moments
when being human
is almost too much to bear.
Not because the world is cruel,
though it can be.
Not because sorrow is heavy,
though I have known its weight.
But because beauty
sometimes enters so completely
there is nowhere left
inside me
to put it.
Today, a stray cat
who has kept her distance
for three months
allowed my hand
to travel the length of her back.
Such a small surrender.
Such an extraordinary gift.
And I stood there,
nearly undone,
by the unbearable beauty
of being trusted.
How is it possible
for something so small
to fill a human heart
so completely?
There are days
when I am so in love
with being alive
that I can scarcely bear
the knowledge
that I must someday leave it.
Not because I am afraid,
but because I have only just begun
to understand
how beautiful it is.
And love.
God, the terrible beauty of love.
To know that everything we cherish
is passing through us.
That every embrace
contains the possibility
of a last embrace.
That the very things
which make life worth living
are the things
we cannot bear to lose.
And still,
we reach.
We open our arms.
We offer our unguarded hearts.
We plant things
whose shade we may never sit beneath.
We love creatures
whose lives are shorter than our own.
We bring children into a world
that cannot promise
to keep them safe.
What astonishing courage
there is in tenderness.
Sometimes I look at the world
and feel such affection for it
that I ache.
For the quiet intimacy
of two people
who no longer need words
to know they are loved.
For the sudden return
of desire
in a body that had nearly forgotten
its own longing.
For the sound of laughter
escaping someone
who has known
more sorrow than anyone should.
For all of us,
brief and bewildered,
trying to make something beautiful
of the time we have been given.
And I wonder
how a heart can hold
so much sorrow
and still find room
for wonder.
How it can break
and remain open.
How the very wound
through which grief entered
can become a place
where beauty gathers.
Perhaps this is what it means
to be human.
To live with the knowledge
that nothing stays,
and to love it anyway.
To be pierced by the world
and refuse to turn away.
To stand inside
the unbearable tenderness
of existence
without asking
to feel less.
Because I do not want
a smaller heart.
I do not want
to be spared
the ache of loving
what is mortal.
I want to feel
the whole impossible thing.
The sorrow.
The wonder.
The longing.
The joy.
Even when it brings me
to my knees.
Especially then.
For what a strange
and magnificent privilege
it is
to be here,
for this brief moment,
and to feel
so terribly,
so beautifully,
alive.
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