Eclipsed - A Letter To Myself

By: COLLIER LAWRENCE

Dear Me,  

Despite your best efforts to plan and calculate, to hope and scheme, there is no way to know where you will be a year from this moment. A moment anchored by the realization that, like Icarus, there are lines you must be careful not to cross and some forces which can not be overcome.

It took a while for your eyes to adjust in the rapid fall of twilight. A dull cold seeped in before your heart grasped smoldering embers which, with stoking, would burn hotter than ever. The momentum, found so easily in the daylight, was still there; your body just needed to work with patient diligence to overcome inertia. At first the tiniest steps forward felt eclipsed by backward leaps, that may have well been taken by giants; your mind knew any step forward, no matter how small, was getting you closer to the sun you so desperately longed to chase. It felt as though the work in the dark would amount to nothing; your soul knew the sustenance is the work, irregardless of the sky under which it’s done.

While you sat in a familiar dark, mending your broken wings, watchful eyes on the horizon scanning for the first hint of dawn, I hope you remembered one thing - chasing the sun can be done by the light of the moon. There were stretches of time the moon didn’t light the way but you were mindful to trust the process of the earth turning would bring it back; seeing is not always believing.

the night was busy making the moon

so


i gathered my quilt

and softly

told my heart

we’d come back tomorrow.

- nayyirah waheed


Keep your eyes on the horizon and be ready to take flight. Always.

Me