Somewhere Between You and I

It is a peaceful irony to hear the birds around me as I sit and write this caption— the same birds that preceded and concluded this video. It all repeats, like the dawn chorus, and this fact never consoled me more than at times when I can sense the encroaching purposelessness and fear of the future. After a while (and some whiles last longer than others), that little voice pops into my head like a butterfly passing through my peripheries, reminding me that I need to dance. Reminding me to write. Or better, reminding me to read. Reading something I once wrote feels like reciting a promise to myself. It's a promise to keep doing things like this so that a future me can be granted one of those bittersweet, slanted smiles. Because despite not having a plan like everyone wants me to have, I do have these things; the postcards and photographs that line a staircase of a house, the stories of your youth that accompany family dinners. The things you call a life. I know we can’t take it with us, but somewhere between the different versions of myself, I carry all of me. I carry it like a mountain’s back carries the rivers and although the trek to the top is arduous, although the journey eventually comes to an end, just imagine what the view would be like at dawn.