Time is measured with insufficient grains of sand,

Hissing between the cracks of your fingers and hands.

No matter the manner of containment you have,

There is no method of your too-scant years to save.

See the gray man with empty, dusty calloused hands?

His eyes lift to heaven; his bent back tries to stand.

His hourglass now emptied; his stay here is void.

Are silver tears his lament of a perished boy?

Observe the child, her hands teeming with sediment,

To the rumbling blue sea, her laugh is a descant.

Her feet eagerly run on the uneven ground,

Because she does not know that her sand will run out.

I’ve watched strong youthful men become weak, gray, and frail,

And too many infants born without breath to wail.

Too many believe immortality simple.

“Turn the hourglass, watch my destiny ripple!”

The top of the hourglass remains unrevealed,

Yet the bottom is false; your end written and sealed.

It’s futile to strain and preserve life in the din,

Foolish to serve vanity and be rife in sin.

There’s no time to be wasted, there’s no time to hoard.

What you are allotted, handle in true accord.

Spend precious seconds with friends and family too,

You don’t know your end until your sand has passed through.

This is the only notebook I have never lost, I can confide a series of journal-like thoughts and they stick like fluorescent stars on a ceiling, floating up above for me to look at. To the world, there are so many things I'd like to say, and I never know if I am really the right person to say them.

Life is fleeting, they say, life is long. We spend too much time not fighting for what we believe in. I want to fight-- let me start at my pace, and do what I can. I will do what I can, to protest, to speak up.

But in order to speak we need to believe in the goodness of people. That they are not deaf, but malleable. That they would pay attention.

We spend so much time in war and fear, in hesitation and insecurity.

I have started swimming again and it helps me to remember. The feeling of my arms scrambling in the water, pushing like I too, could cross the sea if I needed to. My lungs emptying out, the knots come up through my chest. I can feel them, at last, the threads grow so moist they break and I can breathe again.

On Sunday I was a couple of steps behind my friends and when my thoughts started buzzing I said sharply 'okay,' to make them go away. They turned and I laughed it off. Off they went, these thoughts. And I breathed in.

One day I will write about sunshine. About the daisies we caught. I will write about love, all its forms, I will write about hope. More than anything else, I believe in hope. I see every day the goodness of people, not just through children waddling down corridors, mothers, brothers, friends, but those who have weathered through everything and still choose to be kind. Through the way my dad will let me finish my sentence, even if it means he has to stand in a parking lot before telling me everyone else has gone inside, so he has to say goodbye. People are so kind, and day by day I find kindness is no longer so much of a surprise.

A few months ago, I was at a table and some friends of friends said that I never got to finish a sentence, that I was always being interrupted. I don't mean this to sound self-pitying, I just hadn't noticed. It doesn't bother me. But I was touched and surprised by their goodness, that they would look, that they would listen. I think they told me they had counted, and the number of interruptions was eight. Why would anyone count someone else's unfinished sentences, except than because they are themselves nothing but good? So it struck me, when I found some old notes-- went looking for them, from April 2016:

'I had resigned myself to repeated interruptions, so sometimes when I was asked a question I didn’t bother answering. He paused, and let the more confident speaker finish, before asking me the question I had never got to answer. His eyes were clear and green and sincere. I caught him leaning back, his mouth closed and his gaze resting on me thoughtfully. He asked another question, which the overconfident jumped in to respond to, and he asked it again so I would answer.'

So how can I not believe in the right to speak, when some listeners are so endlessly good? And perhaps that is all the reason there needs to be.

Last night, I went to sleep

I was 60 years old

This morning, I awoke

I was 10

Into the garage I ran

No school for this college degreed cherub

I located balsa wood and newsprint

Today, I had my kite

My Kitty Hawk is my backyard

My limits are silent against my resolve

My string is silken thread

My ambition is infinite

Two tries and she’s airborne

Drifting aimlessly among the dreams

Of those who never landed

But patiently wait for clearance to do so

My Kite soars in the rarefied air

Tethered only by the tradition

A young boy was so instructed

That this young boy will soon disregard

Nothing sets a mind to freedom and liberty

As a mind offering freedom and liberty

With a cut string, my kite sailed away unbounded

And we were both all the better for doing so.

But fear not, gentle readers

I will fall asleep again

For tomorrow, I will awaken at age eleven

The age I owned my first BB gun.