Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

For a few minutes I make you greater than yourself, and I’m greater than myself, and we’re greater than this barn because we are all this possibility and almostness and maybe.

that moment when life suddenly changes and you’re left picking up the pieces. She says it’s actually how you pick up the pieces that defines you.

Is this a defining moment for me? And if so, what will I do with all these pieces?

There is more to it than geography, though. I am somewhere else in other ways. And this, I know, is part of growing up. The part they don’t tell you. That you can find yourself suddenly in another room, one that looks nothing like the one you’re used to, and there’s no getting back—no matter how much you want to—because from now on there is only here, and the only thing to do is settle in and try to make sense of it and tell yourself that this is your life now. This is what it looks like. And you’re going to be okay. You can do this. Because you don’t have a choice.

I don’t see the future as this road that’s all laid out neat and organized: school, work, relationship. I think the future’s kind of like the ocean—more, I don’t know, fluid.”

“Where love goes to die?” “Yeah, or waits to be recycled.” “Recycled love. Now, that’s something to think about. I don’t know. Maybe it’s even stronger because it’s forged from all these different types of love, all the parts that survived.”

I wish I could draw him with words and put him down on paper the way he looks right now, as if he’s part of the sunrise.

Close the book. But first—remember to open yourself up to love and possibility, to almostness and maybe. Use your voice. Let others in. Choose your future. Choose your body. Choose yourself. And go out there and write your life.