Why...
Here is what no one tells you
about magicโฆ
it does not die
with the hands that held it.
It moves like light through water.
It finds a new voice.
It presses, warm and insistent,
into the chest of every child
who ever whispered to the dark,
is anyone listening?
I know now
what I am for,
To hold a mirror
to the ones
who do not yet know
they are already luminous.
You felt that too?
Write it down.
The story you are afraid to tell
is the one someone is starving for.
You are not too much.
You are exactly the right frequency.
I want to write westerns
for fathers who drove through the night.
Horrors for the ones who survived.
Wonder for the child
still waiting at the window,
face pressed to glass,
breath making small moons
on the cold pane.
I want to write you
back to yourself,
back to the first time
you pressed record
and heard your own voice
and thought:
Oh.
There I am.
The magic was never mine to keep.
It was always mine
to give awayโฆ
and every time I do,
every time a story
finds its way through the dark
to another chest,
my father drives
a little further down that highway,
the tape is still running,
and neither of us
is ever really
gone.


That ending made me gasp. Brilliant, Maryellen ๐ค
This piece is so beautiful Maryellen, I think so many of us need to hear this ๐