Suffocated by my own yearning, I pause to reflect frequently. Then I douse myself in gratefulness and live a few days fully. Desire to break out of this prison that my body creates for me by being disabled, and finding places full of joy in between. Longing for when I can be better, yet loving so much that I want to squeeze every last drop of this moment in time. It’s a dichotomy, brought on by my implicit awareness of nuance and depth, meaning, tranquility, truth, life, death, time and what that exactly means. ‘Others’ can’t see quite so clear, what is dear, or why this is this way to me, why time rambles on the way that it does, why I don’t get along in the same way they do, why I am here and why they are there, or why I can’t just be quiet in my loneliness and peaceful in my comaraderie, be quiet and sit down. It’s because I see the bliss. I see the joy. And I’m telling you this, I can see ahead, like few ever do. And I know where this is taking me to. Trying to navigate the perilous streets of life, so that I’ll get on the right path. But not wanting to miss a thing along the way. Worried that I won’t make it in time. Worried that I’ll miss my ticket too. But frustration in memories when it was me and you. Calling out across the land, I wish you could hear me. I wish I had just said I love you. But this is here now. And it is like no other. I am blessed like I have never been. And so in the middle of my worry and my fret, grieving ten long years over you, I stop and pause in between, to take a good long drag on the sheets and the wine, the hill so green, and all of these things that for once I don’t want to lose. I want to feel it to be it, to go and do. Held down and tortured by my limitations, yet joy in so much abundance. I can’t negate just how beautiful it all really is. 

By Kat Lyons