In The Event This Doesn't Fall Apart

by Shannon Lee Barry

Sometimes it feels like fate is telling me where to go. Like the universe flashes for just a moment— Pay attention. This one’s important. Don’t lose this.

And I am telling it, I’m trying. I’m trying every way I can to keep it, and to keep it right.

Traces of you everywhere, a map leading right to me.

And it feels like you were waiting on the edge of my life for so long, little glimmers of a person I could get along with, a person I wanted to be around, waiting until I was ready. You were never far from me.

You feel like a book I read a long time ago— learning you is like remembering something I’d seen written. Your thoughts spill onto me like a dog eared page or an underlined paragraph. Familiar but slightly surprising all the time. You open your arms to me and I think, I have been here before. This is safe.

You are my deja-vu. An echo of the person I had imagined for myself.

and best of all, he will be better than your imaginings. There are things, little girl, that you cannot dream up.

But the one thing that never changed was you. Through everything, all of my surroundings and my days and the music on the radio shifting, you were still there.

And I am a person whole, long before you. I am a person whole without you. But I think the tiniest part of me will be suspended, waiting. There is the tiniest corner of life that won’t feel right until you’re back again.

things I used to hide away as flaws now feel valuable again. I used to love myself so much— every quirk and irritating mannerism, and slowly throughout life they were pointed out to me as difficult, tiresome, negative. But you call me an easy thing.

It never occurred to me that I could be this safe and this happy at the same time.

“All my life, I’ve felt like the people around me were meant to do big things. I know everyone here is destined to do something great.”

And maybe it was the fact that the fireworks were popping behind you, or that everyone had their own hopes for their own specific lives beating hard in their chests that night, or maybe it was the fact that you had stated it with such great conviction. But it felt so true, just then— that we were special and great and this was only the start of our magnificent lives.

I wanted so badly to do something I coul...

Maybe love is just wanting to be known.

I hope I learn you the way you’ve always wanted to be known. (I hope you notice Desiderata is my favorite poem.)