Full

The air is thick these days—

dense with coffee steam,

the weight of an unread message,

sunlight pooled on the floor,

and a worry humming beneath it all.

This fullness aches, sometimes.

A good ache:

laughter that cracks the ribs,

a plan clicking into place,

clean countertops,

the sudden gold of trees

before you remember to name it.

Sometimes it is a different heaviness.

Static in the skull.

Disappointment settling like sediment.

The press of what’s undone.

But never empty.

Life doesn’t do empty.

It only pours—

mundane, magical, miserable—

raw material of the day.

So the question isn’t

what fills the cart.

The question is

what will you build?

Let the bad sit as a monument,

or sift through the wreckage for a useful piece.

Stack the good as a foundation,

or simply watch it pass, a brief sunbreak.

You can’t control what pours in.

Only the shape you give it,

the space you clear to breathe

inside all this fullness.

Your hands hold the tools.

However clumsy they feel.

(A poem I wrote)