Lean in

Joy finds me in the burrow of my chest,

and fills it, stretching against my skin with

irrepressible yearning, so desperate that it hurts.

The good things know where you have been broken most,

touched with the iron rod and trusting hand, when you learn

that healing sometimes feels like revisiting the pain.

And joy sounds like coming home, the front door creaking

on its rusted hinges, a hesitant return to something

you thought you had lost.

Yet joy is laced with unknown fear, holding its breath

for the pin to drop and relapse, for

we are playwrights to our stories, and

we prepare for tragedies.

And we write narratives that we are undeserving, become

stubborn and unyielding to joy knocking.

But what can we do besides lean into the joy and loss the same,

to feel the infinite tenderness and asperity of this world,

to choose joy,

to give ourselves the choice to let joy in.

Lean in, for you were made for so much more

than what you wrote for yourself.