Birthday June 18

How does one sum up a life?

Is there a thread or a river that runs through it?

What links the child, the teen, middle age to...what is this now?  Elder, I guess.

Do I feel the wisdom of age?

I feel the tenderness.

The myriad of close encounters—of words and kisses and surprises exchanged.

I used to think they were promises—padlocks snapped onto bridges that meant lasting bonds, obligations.

Now I feel they passed through me like water over rocks making slow indentations, leaving their impressions, melding with what was already there.

I am all that I have ever met, like fabric slowly woven, with knots and holes, rough surfaces and deep gouges.

We flow over each other.

Some shiver 

Some dig out a deeply buried stone.

It tumbles and splashes and finds a new home, not forgotten but changed—charged with new energy.

It takes years to trust the movement of atoms.

My permeable walls used to feel like hurt, like injury.

Now I know they are portals.

It takes this long to feel the flow 

to invite the brush with another without the fear of loss or judgement.

We are all just flowing over each other.

Ancient waters

Rocks caressed, jostled into sand

Time smoothing edges

Opening windows

Rolling my past into my future.

Each grain of sand.

My beach stretches wide.