I heard an elderly woman say “there’s something beautiful in every chapter of our lives”

So I began to study yours in mine

I thought of what you left behind

I thought of what you took

Mostly I kept coming up short

Like the story was unfinished

Like somehow it had diminished

Toward the end nothing but blank pages

I kept reading in between the lines

Running out of time

Running out of words to read

Trying to find the beautiful in you

I laughed at old stories

Smiled at old pictures

Memories sat like fixtures in my head

Once embedded wounds began to shred

Collectively I found the images of the woman you left behind in some

Respectively I ripped those out

I wanted nothing to do with her

Far from the gloom

Long nights with moon

Although you couldn’t stay to watch me bloom

I vowed to move gracefully

And so I found what I came here for

I found the beautiful in me