You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves—all of our selves—wherever we go.

We can endure anything if we know when it will end.

I wish to forgive, so this is aspirational. I write this aspirationally. The way you’ll be remembered is the way you’re living now, I tell myself. If you don’t like it, change it. By the time these pages are printed, by the time you’re reading this, may I be in a place of forgiveness.