The Paper Swan

by Leylah Attar

Vengeance only begets more vengeance, more chaos, more darkness. Vengeance abducts us and imprisons us and mutilates us, and we suffer and suffer until we unravel its probing parasitic suckers from around us.

“You can either choose love or you can choose hate, because where one lives, the other will die.”

Because when we love, we carry it on the inside, and we can turn on its light even in our darkest moments. The deeper we love, the brighter it shines.

In the grand scheme of things, we do the best we can, all of us, and we make up our stories as we go along; we write them and direct them and project them into the world. And sometimes we get other people’s stories, and sometimes we don’t, but always there is a story behind a story behind a story, linked in a chain that we can only see a small part of, because it’s there when we’re born and it continues after we’re gone. And who can comprehend all of it in one lifetime?

We are sand and rock and water and sky, anchors on ships and sails in the wind. We are a journey to a destination that shifts every time we dream or fall or leap or weep. We are stars with flaws that still sparkle and shine. We will always strive, always want, always have more questions than answers, but there are moments like these, full of magic and contentment, when souls get a glimpse of the divine and quite simply, lose their breath.

You don’t always get the treasure by holding on. Sometimes the magic happens when you let go.