If I Had to Live It Again

If I had to live it again,

I would still give my parents

everything I had to give

my time,

my hands,

my worry,

my love.

I would still stand beside them

until standing became letting go.

I would still give my child

everything I knew of being a mother,

even knowing that love

does not guarantee

that someone will stay.

I would still love the people I loved

without measuring what came back.

I would still empty my hands

rather than spend a lifetime wondering

what might have happened

had I given more.

I have been given lemons

and made something sweet.

I have been given ice

and waited for water.

I have been given straw

and learned to weave.

Survival was never beautiful every day.

Sometimes it was simply

getting up again

before anyone knew

I had fallen.

And now my body asks something different of me.

It asks me to be still.

To admit that strength

is not always carrying everything myself.

To place what I cannot carry

into the hands of God.

I am not standing here

counting my regrets.

There is only one perhaps.

Perhaps I would have crossed that distance.

Perhaps I would have been less afraid of what loving you in the real world might mean.

Perhaps when there was still a road between us,

I should simply have taken it.

Not because our ending

would necessarily have changed, but because once in this life I would have liked to stand before you

and know that something

I had carried so deeply in my heart had also existed beneath the same sky,

within the reach of my hand.

But even that I will not turn into sorrow.

Some people come into our lives to stay.

Some come to awaken something that had been sleeping.

And some loves remain unfinished..

not because they were not real, but because life did not give them their final sentence.

So if tomorrow asks courage of me, I will give it.

I have done that before.

I will take my flowers home.

I will stand where my father and mother rest.

I will light a flame

and remember where I came from.

Then I will turn around

and walk toward what comes next.

Not because I am unafraid.

Not because nothing hurts.

But because when I look behind me, I do not see a life

I wish I had lived differently.

I see a woman who loved.

Who worked.

Who fell.

Who built.

Who lost.

Who began again.

And when there was nothing left that she could fix with her own two hands,

she finally learned to open them.

And let God carry the rest.