Welcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 3.

Today I’m sharing an excerpt of a poem written by the late Marina Keegan, an award-winning author, journalist, poet, and activist who passed away just a few days after her graduation from Yale.

I happened upon a book of her essays, The Opposite of Loneliness, in my local bookstore one afternoon, and fell in love with her unselfconscious youthful insights and observations of human nature. I walked away wishing I could read more of her. I hope these words inspire you.

“Bygones” {An Excerpt}

by Marina Keegan

I had a dream the other night that I was checking my email.

That dream sucks.

And woke to woes of seniors writing love songs for tomorrow and

Tomorrow and the melodies that flirt us forward,

whispering the next thing and the next thing and –

so we beat on

birds flocking south until

we circle round and realize maybe

maybe all that running wasn’t worth it.

Maybe we should build a cabin.

Or teach high school. Or use our hands.

My palms are smooth as words –

Weak with fashion and double spaces.

I want everyone else’s club and job and class

The grass I sleep in always browner than

Than that around erasing dreams

To sit and breathe because you

Only bank for two years then it’s over

And twenty two is nothing new

It’s just another chance to build

For when we’re twenty three and twenty four

And time begins to sell for more than

Any 9 a.m. to never.

We’re not stuck. That’s the thing, we’re not stuck.

We owe no one our nothings.

Do you wanna leave soon?

No, I want enough time to be in love with everything…

And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.

///////////

I didn’t know it then.

I’d heard the way you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. In high school, an ex-boyfriend passed me a note with lyrics to a song that said as much.

My Dad said his favorite season of life were the years my sisters and I were all home with them together. Especially the years before school, before we all got busy living our lives. When he worked 2nd shift, we all lived the majority of our daytimes in that little brown house with the plaid sofas and shaggy brown carpet. All of us eating and playing, crying and growing, laughing and needing together.

Pastor said it from the front, maybe 12 or 13 years ago, The days are long…but the years are short.

The years are short.

The years are short.

I had heard, so I guess I knew. But not the way I know it now.

Not the way I know it every time we say goodbye. Every time I drop them off or they grow another inch and tower over me while I’m making them snacks in the kitchen.

Every time I wade back through the snapshots on the coffee table, full of little tinies in silly hats before preschool or lining pirate figurines all the way up the stairs and jumping up and down for a putt-putt hole in one on the 5th try.

Full of them wrestling on the grass in the middle of a pumpkin patch or dressing up baby sister in a Ninja Turtles shell.

Also rolling in the snow and when they couldn’t help but wear their joy on Christmas mornings, and a tiny ballerina in pigtails with angel eyes or wearing her little jeans that made me call her Sassypants.

Pictures from that day at the Zoo with a group of friends, where 2 big brothers held Sassypants’ hands, one on each side to protect her when they could have run off with the boys.

And oh the parties and Lego Fests and beaches and NC state fairs. And then that little line of pirates turned into princesses, and then race cars and army men, all the way up these stairs we climb each day.

There I go again. Not letting bygones be bygones.

Should I work on letting go? Move on? Get a life of my own? Or will I live forever longing for the past?

I only know today feels fragile. Feels like the beginning of a long letting go.

I’m determined not to let these relics fade into bookshelves. Not to let the coming moments morph into mementos.

I’ve had enough time to fall in love with everything, and I still want more.

So I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.