For the longest day, and everything it refuses to let me look away from.
On the Longest Day
I am joyful, afraid, and longing.
Celebrating the light,
grieving the dark I know is already gathering,
waiting for me later in the day.
I rise with the sun,
already processing, already planning,
before my eyes are even open.
The light stretches longer and longer,
and I cannot resist the pull
to fill every extra moment.
The thinking and the doing
bleed into moments
that were never meant to hold them.
Not because I want to.
Because some part of me does not know how to be still,
does not know how to sit inside a second
without reaching to fill it.
The way you hold on tight to the best of everything
the moment you suspect it might not last.
I am giving and I am receiving.
I am listening and I am guiding.
I am present and I am hoping.
All at once.
I make the most of every drop of sun.
I can see more, so I do more,
because the daylight makes me believe
I should be doing something worthy of it.
And still, underneath my gratitude,
darker days are already forming.
I welcome every extra bit of brightness
the way you welcome what you know you will miss,
even while it costs me
the stillness I keep promising myself.
The longest day doesn’t ask who I want to be.
It shows me who I actually am.
Someone trying to hold it all in one body.
The light and the dark.
The movement and the rest.
The longest day doesn’t own me.
But it knows me.