The Almost

There is something just beyond me.
A shape in the fog,
a whisper beneath the noise,
a calling I can’t quite name
but feel in the hollow of my chest
where dreams go to wait.

I was meant for something.
I know it.
I’ve known it since I was a boy staring at the sky,
since I first felt the weight of time pressing forward,
since I learned that some hearts beat louder
not because they are greater,
but because they refuse to be quiet.

And yet—
here I stand,
hands full of smaller things,
beautiful things,
things that ground me
even as they keep me from flying.

I build bedtime stories instead of revolutions.
I shape soft places instead of futures.
I love in ways the world will never name,
never write down,
never set in stone.

And still,
I ache for the grander.
For the tremor that says I was here,
for the echo that ripples past my own years,
for the change that is undeniable,
undeniable,
undeniable.

But maybe I have it all wrong.

Maybe it is not in the storms I summon,
but in the quiet shifts,
the gentle currents I set moving
without ever knowing where they will go.

Maybe the revolution is in the way my sons
will carry my laughter into the world,
the way my love softens their hands
before they touch history.

Maybe it is in the kindness
I press into the world like fingerprints,
in the words I leave behind
like seeds in the wind.

Maybe the grander purpose was never
a single moment, a single change,
but the thousand tiny ripples
I will never get to see.