You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

And she believes that when we choose our parents, we know their limitations. We know the ways we will be hurt by them, or let down by them, and we choose them anyway. She believes the lessons we need to learn in this lifetime are tied to the parents we choose.

My work was not the problem. My work was the solution. I kept us here with words.

—I could say it’s difficult to forgive someone who hasn’t expressed remorse. I could counter with questions: Why do I need to forgive someone who doesn’t seem to be sorry? What if forgiveness doesn’t need to be the goal? The goal is the wish: peace. Can there be peace without forgiveness? How do you heal when there is an open wound that is being kept open, a scab always being picked until it bleeds again? I could say this is my task: seeking peace, knowing the wound may never fully close— “Forgiveness is complicated. To be at peace, I think what I need is acceptance. I accept it.”

I had lost my narrative, but I wanted to find resolution.

poems: “They begin in the middle and they end in the middle, only later.”