“PALMS REACHING, I AM NOT THERE”
What if the years were a jar
I left open,
and the wind carried away
the laughter meant to live inside it?
My daughter, seven summers old,
her voice light enough to rise like fireflies—
gone before I could catch its glow.
My son at six,
castles of imagination half-built,
left to tumble
without my hands to steady them.
The youngest, just three,
reaching up with open palms
as if he already knew
I would not be there to lift him.
Sixteen seasons turned their pages without me—
petals falling,
snow piling,
clocks spinning
in rooms I never entered.
Do the playground swings still creak
with echoes of voices I never pushed higher into the sky?
I imagine small hands growing into larger ones,
slipping through mine
before I could hold them,
as though time itself conspired to close the door.
Or is it only my mind painting these shadows?
Did I truly miss the sound of first words,
the wobble of first steps,
the fire of teenage eyes daring the world?
The thought burns
and soothes at once,
because maybe the absence is not as wide as I fear.
Yet the silence presses in,
reminding me of what if—
and what might already be true.
