Imagine if that’s all it took; of all the ways that goodness slipped, to find it soon upon the hook two days afar since when you sipped.

And still! It promises no harm. And yet! It poses as a cure. For how it gleams and glows with charm. For why your faith must yet endure.

You’ve long awaited feeling green - that pang to undermine wears old - what was foresaw shall be foreseen as greens unfold as mines to gold.

I envy those who bear the rain - already soaked, why spoil the fun - they are the same who know that pain is but endured, and not outrun.

It passes (as they knew it would) - head-starts on all who turned and fled; I oversee what’s understood: their standing still to get ahead.

We rise toward the freedom-peak, and summit at the clear survey, expecting higher scales to seek, but find that down’s the only way.

We clamber from the panic-crowd, and back away from every fate, retreating into empty clouds that snare our steps with hollow weight.

We fall right through the nothing-edge, and lucky if we catch upon ascending air that forms a ledge on which to furl and fossil on.

We wake to days that other’s don’t, and count the ways we’ve lived the same, contending that it can’t - it won’t - become of us how they became.

Don’t fear the fervor of my leisure; each venture falls as fast it rose. As love, as lust (as every pleasure), they’ve all made way for greener throes; that is except for all I treasure: this life (to which all others measure) that I choose each day as hard I chose

before, again, evermore again.

There was never an urgency. ’Pinned’ in my messages, ‘Starred’ in my chats, sound advice and mentorship at my fingertips, banking on years of challenging questions, astute insights, and a-ha moments. But those chats now lay inactive - ‘12 days ago’ - and they will increment for every day to come.