Summer sits on the porch rail
Breathing slow through open screens
The sky is huge and harmless blue
Like something I can almost keep

I find a pebble in the dirt
Smooth as a secret in my fist
It weighs as much as certainty
As much as any wish exists
I press it to my pocket seam
Like stitching hope into my day
And give it a private title
So it won’t float away

I ask the grown-up questions
With crumbs still on my chin
“Where does all of this stop?”
You smile and point past the wind

You tell me the edge is far away
A line the light just likes to play
And I believe you, wide-eyed true
Because believing feels like something I can do
I hold my little forever tight
Under sun and porchlight
Not knowing yet the gentlest rule:
What leaves can still stay with you

Later, down by the water
The day turns quiet, amber, slow
Dragonflies write shaky letters
On the glassy undertow
I take the stone out like a vow
And for a second I can’t move
Then I let my arm decide it
And the lake takes what I threw

It’s gone without a sound
No splash big enough for grief
But the surface starts to answer
In widening rings of relief

Now I see the trick I never knew
The world keeps talking when we’re through
A small thing falls, and disappears
Yet somehow stays for years and years
It isn’t magic, it’s just true
The water proves it to my youth
Not knowing names for time or loss
I watch the circles cross

One day you’ll wave from a doorway
One day I’ll nod like I’m okay
One day a song will hit my chest
And carry you a mile away
Some goodbyes don’t slam like thunder
They soften into air
But something in the shape of them
Keeps moving everywhere

So I learn to let things go
Without pretending they are gone
I learn a hand can open up
And still feel what it held on

Now I see the trick I never knew
The world keeps talking when we’re through
A small thing falls, and disappears
Yet somehow stays for years and years
If love can be a moving line
Across a lake, across a mind
Then maybe endings aren’t a wall
They’re ripples after all

Even when the pebble’s deep
The water remembers how to speak
And on my palm, an empty place
Still holds its shape