Moon River

Lately, I’ve been thinking about death.

Not in the way that spikes fear into your chest or keeps you awake at night.

It’s softer than that.

More like a quiet hum in the background of my days.

A steady, unignorable awareness that all of this; this body, this laughter, these nights spent tracing the stars is temporary.

Not something to dread.

Just something to acknowledge.

I wonder sometimes:

When I am forever gone,

what will be left of me?

Will there be traces? Echoes?

A familiar scent that drifts through a closed window?

A phrase I used to say that someone will catch themselves repeating without realizing why?

I don’t fear dying.

I fear disappearing.

Because when the heartbeat stills and the skin cools, what remains?

Photos? Words?

Maybe some laughter folded into someone else’s memory?

Maybe a song on a random Tuesday afternoon that reminds someone, somewhere, that I once existed.

I think about this not because I’m morbid,

but because I love being alive too much to pretend it’s permanent.

I’ve lived.

God, I have lived.

I’ve danced in empty kitchens with the lights off.

I’ve kissed under skies so wide they swallowed my name.

I’ve stayed up until the sun bruised the edges of the sky, talking about dreams we were too afraid to chase.

I’ve held grief and love in the same breath and learned they are sometimes indistinguishable.

I’ve laughed until I forgot the weight in my chest.

I’ve loved people who never said it back and still found it beautiful.

I’ve built homes in people’s hearts, even when I knew I could not stay.

There were days I wanted to quit.

Mornings where the gravity was heavier than usual.

Nights where my hands trembled over old wounds I thought had already scarred.

But still, I stayed.

Still, I opened my eyes.

Still, I whispered thank you to the ceiling or the sky or whatever God was listening.

I lived the tiny moments.

The vanilla ice cream melting too fast on my tongue.

The way my friend’s voice cracked when she laughed too hard.

The comfort of a hand finding mine under the table.

The softness of knowing that even if I was temporary, the love I gave was not.

Maybe when I’m gone, there won’t be monuments.

No parades.

No grand legacies carved into marble.

Maybe all that will be left is the way I made someone feel,

the way I said their name with gentleness,

the way I sat with someone in their darkness without trying to fix it.

Maybe someone will remember that once,

there was a girl who loved the world so stubbornly it cracked her open,

and she didn’t close back up.

Maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s the kind of immortality that matters.

So today, as I sit with these thoughts,

I am not mourning.

I am thanking.

Thanking every moment that built me,

every heartache that softened me,

every stranger who smiled back.

Thanking this life, flawed and fleeting as it is,

for letting me live it.

I don’t know how long I have.

None of us do.

But if my time comes sooner than I expect,

I hope whoever remembers me doesn’t just remember that I was here.

I hope they remember that I was alive.

Fully. Fiercely. Softly.

Bravely.

And that I was grateful

for all of it.