|here within us|

“We was going fast.” That’s what the boy at the end of the story said as the tears finally began to fall. “We was going so fast.” How is it that at the same time, time can move at the pace of a snail yet also faster than we can blink?

How do the days stretch long, yet they’re suddenly over and night has come round yet again and then there’s dawn tugging at your eye lids right after you closed them?

We was going so fast.

So much has happened.

If we wrote it all down (again, all in one place instead of scattered over a span of time in all the places we wrote in while it happened), then we’d see.

We was going so fast.

We go for walks in the evening and look at the flowers along the way. We say all the good we see and let ourselves linger while the dog trails a scent in the field. We listen to each other and take it all in — even what we don’t understand or care to know. Just because the ones we love are saying the words, we listen.

And, somehow, we know:

The way is through and through is never hasty.

All around us, we was going so fast, but here within us, we slowed ourselves to love.

We slowed ourselves to love.