turn the page

Turn the page. 

Look at all of the letters. Look with your eyes and your heart. Let your soul feel them. Run your fingers along the indentations that the words speak. Read the words. Close your eyes and think about them. What story do they tell? What feelings do they illicit? Linger on the page. Get a sense for the genre. Be with the paragraphs. Close the book, walk around your life. What has this page given you, added to? How has it left you feeling? Embody it. The thoughts bouncing around in your head. What little pieces have they left in your eyes, in your heart, in muscle or bone?  Close your eyes , let the words roll around in your mouth, soak into your belly, make a home in your lungs so that they are with you every time you take a breath.

What were they, what are they... what can they someday be? Find yourself cozying up on a couch with them or packing them in your bag for work or tucking them in your pocket for a moment when annoyances creep in. For when you’re stuck in traffic or it feels like it’s 100 degrees in the grocery store, or for when things keep slipping out of your hand. They are a part of you. 

Go back to the book. Open it . Re read the words that now are familiar, that are no longer foreign. The recognition of them now feeling like acquaintances, maybe even friends. The words that are long or short. The words you knew or that you had to look up. The words that feel piercing or calming, that feel more like home. Letters like tiny building blocks, words tangled together into phrases and little stories that build you little bits at a time. 

Run your fingers along the words again. Turn the page. This is your life. This moment, this feeling every single bit of it. Turn the page. You have read it. It has soaked into your cells, the page is part of you. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it is exhilarating. Sometimes you want to go back and re read, but I promise if you let yourself move through it, really even let it move through you, you can still love it. You can still miss it, you can still feel the tugs at your big heart late at night late calling you back but you can turn the page. The page is already you.

I see you. I love you. Keep going.