Almost Ours
I am enamored
with choice.
With the quiet fork in the road
that appears
a hundred times a day.
Left or right.
Yes or not yet.
Stay or go.
Most of them look harmless.
Go see the movie
or save the money.
Wake up early
or turn over
and disappear back into sleep.
Sit beside the stranger
on the bus
or keep to yourself.
Start eating better.
Cut your hair.
Pick up the phone
when Dad calls—
or don’t.
Train for a marathon.
Learn to throw a boomerang
just because.
Press play
on that series
she once loved.
Text the girl
you’ve rehearsed conversations with
a hundred times
in the shower.
Believe in God.
Or try to.
Comfort your friend.
Stay inside.
Begin something.
End something.
On paper
they are light as air.
But paper
has never carried a life.
—
What decides
what matters?
Which thread
pulls the whole seam loose?
Which small yes
reshapes a decade?
We never know
in the moment.
The bus seat becomes a friendship.
The haircut becomes confidence.
The marathon becomes discipline.
The phone call becomes the last one.
A single text
becomes a history
you can’t imagine undoing.
—
And then there are the no’s.
The silence
where courage should have been.
The late-night replay
of what you could have said.
Regret is just choice
echoing.
I have lived there—
in the ache of almost,
in the bruise of too late.
—
We wait for life
to announce its pivotal moments—
to dim the lights,
to clear its throat.
It never does.
It hides in the ordinary.
In Tuesday afternoons.
In checkout lines.
In the second before
you hit send.
—
I used to fear choosing wrong.
Now I fear
not choosing at all.
Because even standing still
is a direction.
Even silence
is a reply.
—
We are built
from a series of small doors
we barely remember opening.
Some lead to joy.
Some to grief.
Some to rooms
we outgrow.
But each one
moves us.
And maybe that’s the point—
not to master the outcome,
not to predict the weight—
but to be brave enough
to turn the handle,
to step through,
to trust that even the smallest decision
can carry us
somewhere
we never thought
we’d go.