Photo by Jacob Owens
Every good thing
I think I’m not the first to tell you
we experience time as a thing
moving forward, when really,
everything is happening at once.
I picture someone dying
alone in an ICU, on a vent,
her family unable to visit.
But she’s with them now, healthy,
on a regular old Saturday,
eating warm bread. No,
not in heaven, in the past,
which is now, so don’t worry,
because we’re going there.
We’re already there.
I drive the kids home from daycare
through the snow. A heavy November sky
makes 5pm into nighttime.
My mom lives blocks away.
I can’t get near her.
But can’t you see it? I’m a kid
in her kitchen, eating a sneak peek
of Thanksgiving stuffing from a small
blue bowl, the air full of onions and butter
and thyme. I’ll always be there.
Sometimes, it’s easy to see
that truth of everything
in waves of goods and bads,
hards and easies. I can relax
as the crest of one melts into the trough
of another just to rush back up, up, up.
No need to worry that now,
there will only be troughs,
because when is now, anyway?
Every good thing is happening now,
even though none of it is,
so don’t worry.
The Author
Annie Anzalone is a speech therapist for Denver Public Schools by day, and a poet by night. She has a Bachelor’s in Music and French, and a Master’s in Communication Disorders. She writes about her work in a large public school system, the experience of being a parent to young children, and her observations as a human in the world
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