If time is kind

"I dream of ordinary futures."

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old”
- Franz Kafka

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I want to grow beside you,
not like vines that cling,
but like trees sharing soil,
roots tangled only where they choose,
crowns rising in their own directions
yet drinking from the same rain.

I imagine years as rings inside our trunks,
each one a season survived,
a lesson embedded into the grain.
Some rings will be thin with drought,
some swollen with too much rain,
but all of them proof
that we stayed,
that we kept reaching for light.

I want to watch you discover yourself
the way dawn finds the edges of mountains,
revealing contours even you didn’t know you had.

I want to be there
not to shape you,
but to witness you
becoming
with every passing day.

And I want the same for myself,
to grow in your presence
like the forest that finally learned
it was allowed expand, upwards.

To soften where I was rigid,
to strengthen where I once trembled,
to bloom without apology.

I dream of ordinary futures.
Shared mornings,
wrinkled hands,
laughter that never runs out.

Two bodies slower now,
two minds still curious,
two hearts that never stopped
recognizing each other.

Even if the road to that future
is not straight,
even if it splits and winds
and surprises us,
the wanting remains.
Gentle, enduring, alive.

To grow old with you
is not a promise I demand.
It is a hope I water daily,
a seed I keep warm in my chest,
trusting that if it is meant to root,
it will.

And if it does,
what a forest we could become.

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