A Moment

“I imagine that ‘yes’ is the only living thing.” — e.e. cummings

To Be Now

At this moment, I hear the sounds of practice and passion I once knew. They pour from a stranger’s guitar, filling the space before me. The voice singing softly in the room stirs the memory of someone intensely alive, someone I once loved.

To be in this moment is to watch a sunset and to find a photograph tucked away in a kitchen drawer. The sun slips beyond the horizon as I slide the photo back into its place. I think: it is beautiful. And if it stays there, perhaps I will stumble upon it again. If not, it is still here—hidden, kept.

To be in this brevity is to taste hot food on my tongue, a flavor that tastes like yesterday, melting years away with every bite. It is both comforting and sad. I have known it before—at the table with my mother, the breeze drifting through an open screen door, in a cluttered, narrow dining room. The taste is warm, familiar, unmistakable.

To be in this space is to stand close to loved ones without brushing their foreheads or kissing their cheeks. They are adults now, no longer children. And yet, in their eyes, I still see the mischievous blue-eyed angel and the green-eyed cherub, smiling, longing to be touched.

To be in this period is to smell the ocean carried on the wind—to inhale memories of boardwalk stalls, lemonade, sunscreen, and seaweed. It is to breathe in summer’s sunlight and listen as the waves reach for my wading feet.

To be now is to exist beyond the perceived midpoint of life. And what importance is that, really?

To be now is to know, to remember, to reminisce.

To be now is to live.

How can I be now?

It is not easy to sit at this intersection of existence, where past troubles linger and future grief waits its turn.

How do I want to be? Now, I feel both wonder and pain.

I want to be.

For me, now, to be is to recognize possibility. Now is—as it has always been—real.

There may still be more for me to become. More that is possible.

Now.