bruce merrill

You assume something must be pulling you. Look up. The ceiling is empty. The dance was always yours.

Between the thing that happens and the story you tell about it, there's a small unguarded second. That's where you actually live.

Strip away the roles, the names, the things you've been called. Whatever doesn't leave is the part worth knowing.

Chasing it is the surest way to be the one thing it can't catch. The pursuit and the absence have always been the same shape.

Strip everything else and this is what's left. The air you didn't ask for, arriving on schedule, asking nothing back.

What was given freely wasn't meant to be earned. The trying to deserve it is what kept you from receiving it.

The ones you'd say if you knew were never the ones you waited to be ready for. Readiness was the delay disguised as preparation.

Not yours. Not mine. One. The line between us was a sentence we agreed to keep speaking.