Embers
Today I let my goal live. I wrote it down sloppily on a notecard and granted it life.
It is real now. I mean, it’s been real all of this time surviving inside of me like an ember of unrest but today I cannot deny it. I taped it to the window in front of the place I sit for 8 hours every day. I can’t not see it.
I know this how the words would want it to be.
I have sent them as a tiny bit of my soul to live outside of me for a while, or hopefully, for always. I have released them from where they have been hiding in a jumbled mass of messy thoughts. Now they are one organized sentence with a begging, middle, and end.
I gave six words to my goal, but I think these words would argue that they gave themselves to me. They found me palms sweaty sitting at my desk on a Sunday looking for answers and they released me.
They swirled down from the universe and asked me to take them this time and to not let them go somewhere else.
This is not the first time these words have visited me but it is the first time I have openly accepted them. We first met that summer in Europe and I told them they were wrong. I told them that there were other words out there that reflected my correct goal, one that was not crazy and that people in my life would approve of.
I let the wrong words live inside of me for quite some time. Maybe I intercepted them as they were traveling through the universe on their way to the person they belonged with.
I am not this person and those words scratched at the inside of my rib cage dissatisfied by our match. I have released them and I hope they go find the person who will give them life because the scratching was insufferable.
My words do not scratch. They smolder with a steady heat reminding me of their existence. They are truthful but the truth is not always gentle. When these words feel me leaning close they heat to burn.
I would rather hold them in my hand forever instead of releasing them again into the universe. I would do this even if that meant the words would burn a hole straight through my hand.