There is a firm line Between what was And what is And we cross it every moment of every day of our lives, We hardly notice it, Only sometimes acknowledge it with the changing of the leaves or the stature of a child, But the magnitude of loss emboldens the line so that it is not only noticeable, But undeniable and irrevocable, A mark made of permanent ink on a timeline drawn in pencil, And we trip over these lines as we grow, falling face down into the black abyss of loss and pain, And that feeling that we can never go back to the time before, That nothing will ever be the same But we cannot go back anyway, Can never be smaller than we have become, And so we recognize the inevitability of loss, The inexorability of forward movement, And as I wonder why I cannot take these people and thing that I love with me as I grow, My only hope to realize that one day I will be big enough to encompass both past and future simultaneously And so it is not in try