You Were Never Meant To Stay In One Place
By Kristen Lee
The sun has started to shine differently. It’s May now, and the sky knows it.
A warm sheet of green has blanketed the ground. The young pink blossoms have bloomed into full-bodied fairies that dance amongst the trees that line the brick sidewalks and white fences, towards the river and into the fiery horizon.
Hearts peek shyly out of their cocoons and begin to flutter in the in-betweens. Frivolous thoughts frolic more freely than before. Even the most timid souls begin to soak in the temperate air.
Everything seems to change with the seasons. Nothing happens in and during, but always and only at the cuff. Whenever things seem to be cruising along, moving only with the wind and the waves, humbly and unassumingly, the rug gets pulled out from underneath, as if some league of spirits awaits these peaceful moments. When everything is going well, when things are seamless, when even maybe your heart has finally moved passed the past, pulled towards other humans and things, this is when your head freezes and your eyes begin to burn and sound comes to a slow, heavy halt.
It appears that you were never meant to stay in one place. Even when you had convinced yourself that you could live a quiet, stable life, the stars beg to differ. Your soul begins to crack all over again underneath the weight of reality, and you’re forced away from the fruits of your patience before you even have a chance to taste them.
The roots that you had just planted had only just begun to drink in the rain, willingly and earnestly. Your heart had just begun to patter rapidly against your inner mitochondria, and your eyes had just found their light again.
But nothing is forever, and both discomfort and comfort are temporary. You are an ocean away from the life that you had worked so hard to suppress and forget, and it feels even farther now. What is it that pulls people together, and what is it that pulls them apart? Is it the stars or the moons, or is it momentum, or is it unprovoked energy that decides who shall be in a given place with a set of given hardships and joys? Perhaps there are invisible threads that connect us – threads that span continents and streets, galaxies and millimeters, that connect hearts and souls, that can be thickened and thinned, viscous and stubborn, mended or stretched and severed, bringing people together and apart at the wrong and right times.
But summer has only just begun. The waters have only just begun to warm and the blanket of green has only just begun to reflect the glowing visages of hopeful hearts. Time has only just begun to slow and now, we wait for the full force of summer to engulf us in its limitless threshold, until we are everything but restless.