Be Around

Be around for your best friend’s 21^st birthday because else

She’s going to have to spend it alone

And your absence would leave a gaping hole

On her otherwise joyful day.

Be around for your little sister’s high school years

Because she’ll be so confused and sad

That she might do something reckless

If you’re not present to hug her out

Be around for your own wedding. Be around to read the next greatest book series and be around to write it.

Be around to watch your first concert and graduate with a master degree and to fall asleep in libraries where strangers gives you blankets and to ride trains alone until you’re no longer afraid of them.

Be around to make art on your wrists when you get bored and to taste all the food you always wanted to eat.

Be around to write poetry that sucked until you’ve bleed enough ink to write ones that doesn’t.

Be around to get so good at singing and accidentally became the next musical prodigy. Be around to watch more Grammy awards and to get one. Be around to visit New York and live there. Be around to visit Disney world and see the world.

Be around for your fiftieth birthday where you gaze at what you have achieved and think back on all those years where you thought you may not make it.

Be around to show people who have doubted you, including yourself, that you can be better than they thought you ever could be.

Be around. There are still so many things that you haven’t yet found.

Poem by M

Art by Dini