What did you learn, they'll ask
me around party tables and someone
else's graduation
punch.
I'll be honest this time,
I think.
I learned we cover
our pain in
insufficient
disguise. We keep moving
to the next dawn, the next
daylight,
only because we've watched
the morning
come sprinting over long hills
and wash like the ocean over a whole yard
of gravestones. I've learned patience
is about learning
to fall
apart
and laugh while it's happening,
that hope
is giving and never expecting things to go
as you wanted. It is
letting go.
And I've learned that hurt can run
so deep that some days bright
eyes
are the last straw to shatter like glass
your whipped
and bleeding
back. But
it is when you turn back to stare
the sun down, when you laugh for no
reason
and love regardless.
Then it is worth everything. That
is, I think, being alive.
