[thetimewehave]

There are trees on this small plot of land that were here before and after my grandfather. I have to imagine loved and hated them in equal measure for their constancy in his life. Their shade and wildness were a comfort for his home and family. Their needles and leaves piling up below them were their own nuisance, the pack of red squirrels that lobbed them down at unfortunate targets were more than that even.

This land passed to me now, where the trees being older than me is no feat. Everything here is. The house, the paths, the grass, every plant, and especially those trees.

I’ve been told this land was a Christmas tree farm before the house was build in the 1950s. My family came along soon after that. My mom sat under the maple in the front yard, a perfect nook for her doll house to sit and a lovely patch of shade for her and her pet rabbit to play. She and her sisters all labored in the yard under their parents’ watchful eyes, just like I can still imagine them watching me to this day.

My grandfather planted these maples around us. Each sapling, he would find a home for in this yard or his daughter’s yards until they could hold no more. I can’t be upset sweeping up the maple seeds when I know how he valued each small part of his trees.

There were seven pines of my childhood. There were six sugar maples. Two pines we all loved came down when I was just a child, and the way my cousins tell it I sobbed through that day. Two maple trees were lost beyond repair last summer, through the roof and fence and we hurt for those things my grandfather had built. Another maple and a pine both leaned in too close to the family home as if they didn’t already know the secrets it had to share this summer. It felt like losing family, more family, as my grandfather passed so recently, as they went. In every storm I wonder which of them may have fallen onto my bedroom, if they ever really could hurt me given my roots and theirs. We won’t ever know if their lives saved mine.

I wonder if the ones still standing blame us. I wonder what they would think being left behind with so many sister trees decorated and discarded so many decades ago. I wonder if they are happy to still have four of their sisters standing tall so close, and seeing more so close by. None stand as tall as our pines here, and I have to wonder if our love and care made this difference.

There is so much we can’t know. What I do know is this: I will take pride and care in our trees so tall, I will try to make peace with the red squirrels, and I will sweep these needles up and never be rid of them. And I will watch the sun on their leaves and needles and appreciate the time that made them.

[thetimewehave]

It occurs to me, gripping the clump of crab grass slowly widening the cracks of my driveway, that even this is a form of worship.

There’s something full of power about how this tough patch of green can dig its roots so deeply. That over time, it breaks apart rocks even carefully laid. That there’s green among the unnatural blackness at all.

Sure, I feel the holiness of nature as I eye the first shoots of spring or the bright blooms of summer. In the trees, seemingly in one day, loosing a whole array of leaves to fight against the chilling grayness of winter. When I walk through a damp forest of mud and decay and rain drops hitting each leaf on their way down. In the sunshine on snow and the way the snow quiets and stills it all.

But it is in this, fingers and hunched back aching, fighting for what I’m worth against this spindly plant I’ve decided does not belong in my small part of the world, that I understand faith. Even this, a part of the world that we humans try so hard to fully overcome but never fully control, is beautiful.

I cannot control this world. I can observe and try to plant flowers that bloom and try to win the battle over my driveway.

I cannot help but love this world and its wonders.

I cannot help it even as my fingers slip and I lose again to this awful crab grass.

[thetimewehave]

Did I enjoy it all enough?

The last light and warmth of the day, the flowers bloomed before they fell in the rain. The food on my tongue, the laugh on my lips with friends who had to go home. The smell of the back yard pine that came by on the breeze and the feel of their hand in mine.

I want to steep in these feelings like tea leaves and take them with honey. I want to feel them and let them warm me like bubble bath water.

But have I felt them enough and squeezed each dry? Can I catch them like fireflies for their brightness in the dark?

Can I ever stop feeling like I’m taking it all for granted, that I’ll miss these moments if I blink?

[thetimewehave]

I can see her pain so clearly. It’s raw and blistered and it will never scab over the way she digs at it.

Doesn’t she know the infection of it has already set? That the longer she lets it fester the more likely it will take parts of her with it?

There are some wounds that will never be the same, but even they can heal.

It doesn’t have to be this that kills you.

It doesn’t have to be the end.

[vexheart]

[thetimewehave]

I will find what used to fill this emptiness if I have to wring it out of every song I’ve ever loved and shovel into every sadness I’ve ever felt. I will make it through if I need to crunch every browning leaf in my path and find every new place my favorite stories ever burned in under my skin.

It will be a fight if this emptiness wants to take me again.

[thetimewehave]

I’ll always circle back to these days.

Where it all feels overwhelming in a way that no amount of planning can fix. You can’t get it all done. You can’t get any of it done.

Where every car on the road is going 15 under and somehow you can’t get by. And somehow life is both the same but going too fast at the same time. You’re wasting time and wasting it forever.

Where it all hurts so much that the silliest thing is peeling another layer of skin from an open wound and you can only curl up to hide from the feeling. Or rage against it all, even the good things you don’t want to.

I will circle back to these days when the sun feels far away and hope farther. When the fall is pulling leaves from trees and I want to cry that I missed the bright yellow on my favorite tree somehow, that time slipped past even my best attempts to feel every second. That the things I love can barely scratch the surface of this emptiness.

And I must remember, I’ve been here before. That it may not be today or tomorrow or next week. But somewhere the sun will peek out from the trees. That a bright yellow leaf will flow down to my feet. That my dog will curl at my feet with her loving eyes. That this is all here for when I can feel it again.

This feeling, I know, can only be temporary. That this feeling, however strong it feels, is not nearly as strong as the joy I’ve gritted my teeth through it to find.

[thetimewehave]

I see you.

You haven’t been seen in a long while, I can’t help but think. You act like a ghost whispering, hoping to be seen but too afraid to make noise.

It’s in the too fast way you talk, like if you pause even a breath then you may lose their attention. In the way that you tell stories so efficiently you barely can laugh at the end. In how you’re surprised if they want to know any part you trimmed to make yourself fit into the smallest space they could give you.

I see how it hurts and you’ve made yourself small. I see you shove yourself down into space that doesn’t fit your lovely multitudes. I want you to know that I see you and, that my time and my life? They’ve been yours and you can stretch into it.

You can take up every inch of this space in my life.

[thetimewehave]

One day I hope to see my child riding the waves of their youth and smile. They will be mortified.

In that moment, as I am now, I hope to remember what that age felt like. How the riptides would pull me under and shame played a much larger role in my world. How the seas could be so rough and exhilarating and exhausting.

And as they rail against the world and likely, me, I know that I will understand my mother a bit better. That my age has caught up and my understanding has grown. That I have more to show for all these years in wisdom and temperance. That I am a lighthouse they can always find to return home.

And that my child will grow into it even in times they’re lost at sea. That for as lost as I was, they will be alright too.

[thetimewehave]

You are here, and why shouldn’t you be?

It’s not about deserving (it never has been), for better or worse. Do you think they show up accidentally? As if their strands of fate leaned towards yours by themselves? They are here still for every reason you’ve given them. They are here by your light alone.

You’re here in this loving place. Their softness is as harsh as the sun spilling into a dark room. You are here, and you should remember you are the friend that warrants it. As long as you choose to be, you are here.

[thetimewehave]

Just one more minute, a bit more time?

How quickly this life passes us by.

Sit with me, a moment here, and breathe this moment in as deeply as your soul allows.

Remember this slowness, remember this one lovely minute you felt so fully.

[thetimewehave]

Another year, and so much has been gained. Loss hung so heavy around my shoulders for so many years, and never for anyone worth it.

It’s these days in the sun I hope to remember most. So many friends that my cozy house couldn’t hold them all, but we couldn’t roast marshmallows out there anyways. Sunshine and fresh cut grass on what could have been a rainy April day, half in and half out of winter. The gentlest hand to hold and feed bites of birthday cake to mark 26, a year that otherwise means nothing but to the ones I love.

These days are softer than smiles in firelight and just as warm. The cold comes and goes, though I’ve built such beautiful shelters against it in all I love.

It will all follow me, I hope, in this next year to come.

[thetimewehave]

I want so badly to love you, this, and us forever.

I’m made to love for life, you know? At least I want to be.

I’ll boil over with affection now and I never want that to go away. You’re kind and thoughtful and I don’t need to pretend with you.

But every part of me wonders if this is how it’s always been. If I’ve loved like now and had it fade later. If I wait a year and it’s all the same as it’s been before. Maybe I only love when it’s new.

Do I trust myself or love you now and love you late enough to matter? Do I trust myself to make it all last with you?

All I can know is that I’m here now, with every bit of love in my heart. That you and this are here. That you and this and us are what we both chose ourselves to be.

Now and as long as we keep choosing each other.

[thetimewehave]

I have always worried that, despite all my efforts, I am unlovable.

That my parents long-dead love cursed me. That my mother loved the space around me, losing me somewhere in the middle. That I came too late into my sister’s lives and they’d grown without a space for me.

Friends who I loved with everything, though many didn’t notice or still left anyways. Partners? Somehow a bitterness rose within me each time- no, love me but not like that. Or, please love me, I’ll do it all if I can just shine in the light of your smiles. I was unlovable, perhaps not able to give love in return as either a product or the reason why.

But you.

But this.

You see me, and see this fear. We bleed the same and know how to dress these old wounds we both carry around. Show me where it hurts, but I know where, I know already. Fast hearts and stumbling words, slow down, I’m here and I will listen.

We fit each other’s arms so snugly. Somehow you love my best jokes at all the worst times I tell them. I appreciate so much the way you love me so thoughtfully. The flowers on the table and the warm dinners we set out for one another. Setting time away and never running out of things to talk about, riding the rapids of my sometimes unrelenting conversations. We love each other so sweetly, two sad children grown up into kind and giving in the ways we wanted.

It is when looking in your eyes, holding back our smiles, I wonder if I wasn’t unloveable. Perhaps I was under-loved.

[thetimewehave]

I’ve been writing so much about time lately, it’s like I know of nothing else. But what else is there to do in autumn than to feel time slipping by?

[serratedpens]

[thetimewehave]

Fall is here, or has it already come and gone?

The leaves still fall, though most are brown. In the backyard, the dogs tramp through them with the most delightful crunches. How lovely it must be for them as they did their noses down deep and sniff out all there is to know about the cool dirt and all its adornments.

The fattening squirrels dig their spring bounties into the grass until the dogs yip and chase. These dogs, they aren’t fast, not with their stocky legs out behind them. The squirrels are safe in the trees, and the dogs bark and are answered by the leaves that drift slowly down.

In the sunshine of every day that may be the last as winter clouds roll in, the dogs lay with their bellies to the sky. The fall makes their skin itch, though they will not understand this. They roll in the browning grass, huffing in their dirty joy.

They say that dogs can see some blue and some yellow. I only hope this is true with the sky so blue today and the leaves of our maple tree so yellow. That today is so bright for them too.

They may not know the winter is coming with its snow and wet and cold, but they squeeze every bit of life from the season. I try to learn from them, crunching the leaves, watching the squirrels, putting my face up to the sun, and appreciating the colors of this world that I can see. I will remember this all, come winter.