“No Woman,No Cry” by Bob Marley

Though it’s cold up here in Boston, I’m choosing to think about all of the times last year where I saw palm trees. Before then, I had never seen palm trees in real life ( I’m a true city girl). Last year I traveled to Florida for the first time, then Hawaii, and then I spent Christmas in New Orleans which I didn’t know had palm trees but now I do. Last year I had to support my family as we lost my grandma and then I graduated college a week or two after that. There were so many endings and beginnings that caused me to have such an emotional whiplash, I felt like I didn’t experience a lot of things in real time. But I did experience the end of cycles in ways that I felt more in control of than when they were being created. And as I’m getting older, I question the concept of time and how it’s best not to count it so I can just be grateful to have it rather than fearing it. It’s a blessing to get older and watch things change, but it’s also scary to want things to stay the same. I wanted to many things to stay the same, but they can’t and neither will I. So I gotta get used to that, but also the freedom that comes with breaking cycles.

A Year of Palm Trees

Cycles break sometimes

They come back; As common

Colds. The air taught me

That hopelessness Is the extremity of disappointment.

I took time’s air Underwater, when I drowned it

My circles broke I came back.

As a life. My only responsibility

Was to Keep Air in my lungs;

And I couldn’t do that. What happens

When you don’t Finish your time

Do you get

To sit at the table Until You do.

thanks y’all