On This Ride Called Life

“On This Ride Called Life”

I was told to write about life,

so here I am—

sitting on an American flag pillow,

sun pouring over the blue patio

at Robert Speroni's,

a good day stretching its arms across us.

We began early—

hands in the potato garden,

planting beans—so many beans,

sifting dirt through fingers

that remembered how to work,

how to stay.

We weeded.

We worked.

We smiled at each other

even after my storm at the start.

And still—

he stayed.

This man is willing, he said,

to work with me.

But something in me

has been slightly off,

a quiet disconnect humming

since Auntie Susie left.

When she died,

something inside me cracked open—

or maybe loose—

something long asleep

woke up.

And suddenly—

I could feel again.

Excitement.

Connection.

The reason for being here.

I found a purpose

in the echo she left behind:

to stay tethered to family,

to remember

that they are the roots

that held me long before I knew

I might drift.

Because leaving them behind

doesn't sit right in my bones.

Still—

this purpose is heavy.

It pulls at me

like a current beneath still water,

dragging me back

to the life before—

the numb walking,

the same days stacked like quiet boxes,

the illusion that distance made me

interesting, mysterious—

when really

it made me unreachable.

I feel it most

in the silence of the massage room,

the weight of stillness pressing in.

What once felt alive in my hands

now feels like repetition,

like erosion,

my purpose chipped away

piece by ordinary piece.

I feel the tug—

stronger now—

toward a dark abyss

where return is uncertain,

where people follow patterns

just because they're there,

just because everyone does—

forgetting the question:

Why?.

My hands—

once vessels of meaning—

feel like they are slipping

into something mechanical.

So shame me not

for pausing here,

for questioning,

for reaching.

I am still learning

how to hold onto the light

without letting the dark

name me.

This—

this is where I stand.

at least for this moment,

On this ride called life.