You were just a simple seed. Nothing more than a maybe. A possibility. Dare I say, a probably.

And in my heart you were watered, sunned, nurtured, and loved. There, you sprouted and bloomed. I could feel you, see you, touch you, as if you were right in front of me.

I was, in my naïveté, so sure of you. So sure that you would steadily grow from a dream into a reality. I assumed you were tied, tethered, secured to the hands on the clock. And as they would surely click forward, you would grow bigger, stronger, realer, until everyone could see you, know you the way I have. It was simply, as they say, a matter of time.

But time is so much more than a simple matter. And I was wrong. Seconds on the clock seem so definitive, certain, innocuous, but every single one is pregnant with choices, possibilities. And the circumstances that will create and negate them.

How do you say goodbye to something that you never had? And how you do mourn something that never was?

Maybe all of our maybes are real in their own right. And maybe, they can be mourned for exactly what they were. A hundred tears for lost years. A thousand for each of the possiblys and the could be’s, and the who knows. And a million goodbyes for the millions of seconds that you will never see. Every circumstance that will never reveal itself to you. Each choice that you will never get to make. All of the roads that have closed and the paths that you will never get to take.

Time always finds a way of bringing us back into its now. The future is a wave pulling you under, strangling your breath, spitting you back onto the shore. Reminding us that we can visit but we can not live there. Here on the shore, in the now, is where we can breathe and start again.

And as time has brought me back to my proper place, I will start building new roads, piece by piece, with each second that time gifts me. And maybe I’ll see you again. Maybe some version of you will finally sprout and bloom on these new paths. Maybe you will get to claim as many minutes and moments that were stolen from you.

Or maybe I will simply visit you in my heart, where you lived and where you died. And each second that we spend in that sacred space of dreams, will solidify into a moment, a moment that will forever be yours and mine.

~ Ours

Relephant Read:

How to Build Your Dreams.

Author: Jenny Spitzer

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: lionel abrial/Unsplash