Life is short, this is true
remember that.
Yet it’s the longest road
you will ever walk.
Find someone to walk beside you;
nobody is perfect,
but it is better to walk alone,
even in the wrong direction,
than with the wrong person.
Many lessons I’ve learnt,
some I’ve misplaced,
others I’ve forgotten.
But one remains,
like spirals in the sands of my mind,
like truth carved deep in my soul:
there is nothing more lonely
than spending your life
loving someone
who did not love you back,
or at all.
All the possibilities passed by
while you held their hand
and the lies you whispered to yourself,
“It will change,
there is time”
becoming a prison
you built with your own hope.
Time is not the enemy.
It never was.
It is the choices,
the unspoken ones,
the moments forgotten.
It is the blindness we wear,
the mask that hides
what mattered most.
Not knowing which seconds
to hold forever,
not knowing which to release,
like moments slipping
through weary hands.
I wish I had known then
which were the ones to cherish
not now,
digging through scattered thoughts,
scratching at shadows
to piece together
what was,
and what was not.
The people I saw,
the hands I shook,
the embraces I shared
had I known
this was the last time
we would stand together in a moment,
I might have held on longer.
I might have breathed it in deeper,
honored the minute
a little more.
I could craft a metaphor,
a clever disguise,
to polish this into poetry.
But these tears, this trembling,
falling as I let go
of what I carried too long
this is already a poem.
And it is more
than enough.
25 August 2025
Odd Thoughts and something
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
