Reflections

Someone asks if you're available.
You do the maths.
A two hour task, that's doable.

Then the weeks go by.
Those two hours never find space in your calendar.
Something always takes priority.

Your maths was never wrong.
It measured the work and stopped there.
The missing number was the week it had to fit inside.

The yes took seconds.
The task is still taking weeks.

I walked out tonight already glad.
The next chapter has started and it feels right.

I wasn't looking for a sign.
My mind was made up.

Then I looked up.
A thin crescent tipped over on its back.
The whole thing shaped like a smile.

It told me nothing I didn't know.

It agreed.

The moon is only a few days into this phase.
So am I.

You keep checking whether you're ready.
The answer comes back blurry every time.

Ready is a feeling built from things you've already done.
The next thing hasn't happened yet.
It has nothing to build from.

So nothing you were ready for has ever changed you.

You walked into the best of it green.
Green and wide awake.

You can go unready.
Ready is what this one is going to make you.

Someone helps in a way we didn't ask for.
The advice arrives uninvited.
They tidy the pile we knew our way around.
The questions keep coming while we are trying to think.

We react to the form the help came in.
Not the reason it came.

Help will not always arrive in the form we wanted.
It arrives in the form they had.

The frustration can stay with us.
It does not have to reach them.

They were not trying to wear us down.
They were trying to help.

I wanted to see a cockatoo before I left.
A red or a yellow tail to say goodbye.

I watched the trees for a week.
Listened for that wailing call that carries further than they do.
Nothing came.

Then a relative met a stranger by chance.
Someone who collects feathers.
They put me in touch.

I asked for a goodbye.
I was given something lighter to carry.

Someone starts telling you what's going wrong for them.
Something drops in you before they've finished.

That part is a reflex.
Feeling it was never up to you.

What comes after is.
Carrying it home. Turning it over at midnight.
Living in their situation like it has your name on it.

They're deep in something.
Climbing down doesn't lift anyone out.
It takes away the one pair of hands still on solid ground.

A hazard appears on the road.
We yank the wheel to miss it and drift into the next lane.

Fear does not require an imaginary danger.
Sometimes the road really is blocked.
Our first escape can become the fastest thing moving.

Fear arrived uninvited.
The turn still belonged to us.

What frightened us may never hurt us.
But our swerve could hurt someone else.

I had pictured the date so often it became its own constellation.
Every point had a place.
Every line was already joined.

Then today looked different.
One point sat beyond the line I had drawn.
For a moment I thought the stars had missed.

I kept watching.

Then the pattern widened.
The misplaced point found its line.
Everything fell into place.

What seemed late for the beginning was right for everything after it.

Nothing had fallen out of place.
The sky was simply larger than my drawing.

We want the next chapter explained before we leave this one.
Knowing where it leads would make the turn feel safer.

That sounds reasonable until we ask how a page becomes known.
It cannot show us what it holds while we leave it unturned.

Fear cannot read ahead for us.
It can only recognise the unfamiliar.

A new chapter can feel unknown and scary and daunting.
That does not make it the wrong page to turn.

Someone close asks what I'll do if it doesn't happen.
Each time they ask a little of their worry creeps in.

They mean it as something practical.
A sensible future to prepare for.
Repeated often enough it starts sounding like foresight.

They are imagining one future.
I still believe in another.

I can hear their worry without borrowing their conclusion.
I can love them without carrying their fear.

Their worry can unsettle me.
It cannot decide where I place my trust.