the Strange Tragedy Of beginnings

Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe

There is a peculiar cruelty
in the innocence of beginnings.

The way a blank page
lies open beneath the light,
its whiteness almost indecent
in its certainty
that something beautiful
is about to happen.

Not a word yet written.
Not a promise broken.
Not a single sentence
forced to carry
the weight of what came before.

Only possibility,
stretching its untroubled limbs
toward a future
it has never learned to fear.

I have been looking
at an old photograph.

A bride.
A groom.
Two faces made luminous
by the extraordinary privilege
of not knowing.

And there it is.

Love.

Not the tired imitation
we sometimes make of it
when the years have worn us thin,
not the dutiful recollection
of something that might once
have existed,

but love,
unmistakable
in the way they lean
toward one another,
as though the world
has briefly forgotten
how to pull things apart.

I have searched those faces
for some small evidence
of what was coming.

A shadow beneath the happiness.
A hesitation in the hands.
Some almost imperceptible fracture
through which the future
might already have begun
to enter.

There is nothing.

Only two people
standing at the threshold
of a life
they have mistaken
for a promise.

And I think
that may be the saddest thing
I have ever seen.

Not because their happiness
was false.

But because it was real.

Because once,
before everything,
they stood in the sunlight
and meant every word.

Because somewhere
inside the people
they would become
there would always remain
these younger selves,
still holding hands,
still believing
they were walking
toward the same place.

How do we bear
the distance
between a beginning
and what becomes of it?

How does a house
that once smelled
of fresh paint
and possibility
come to hold
so many silences?

How do the hands
that trembled
to touch each other
learn the terrible ease
of letting go?

At what precise moment
does a dream
stop being a destination
and become a memory
of somewhere
we never arrived?

There is never
a single answer.

Only the slow arithmetic
of living.

A disappointment
added to a disappointment.

A kindness
subtracted by a cruelty.

The little fractions
of ourselves
we surrender
to keep the peace,
until one day
we look down
at the sum of our years
and cannot understand
how so much living
has amounted
to a life
we do not recognize.

And yet,
it was not all sorrow.

That is what makes
the remembering
so difficult.

There were beautiful days.

There were children
with their whole lives
opening inside them.

There were birthdays,
summer evenings,
the ordinary miracles
of being alive
and not yet knowing
which moments
would become precious.

There was laughter
that belonged to no tragedy.

There were mornings
when the light came in
and everything
was still all right.

I think of those mornings
more often now.

How nobody knew
to be grateful enough.

How nobody thought
to stop the clock
or memorize
the exact arrangement
of happiness
before it changed.

But perhaps
that is the nature
of being alive.

We cannot recognize
the last beautiful day
while we are living it.

We cannot know
which goodbye
will become permanent,
which ordinary afternoon
will outlive
all the extraordinary ones,
which small, unremarkable moment
we will spend
the rest of our lives
trying to return to.

And so we go on,
believing in tomorrow
with the magnificent foolishness
of people
who have never met it.

We make plans.

We choose curtains.

We plant trees
beneath whose branches
we imagine
our older selves
sitting peacefully
beside the people
we have promised
to grow old with.

We name children.

We speak of forever
as though it were a place
we could reach
if only we kept walking.

And all the while,
the future is quietly
becoming something else.

Not necessarily worse.

Sometimes it is kinder
than anything
we could have dreamed.

Sometimes love finds us
in the wreckage
of the life
we thought we wanted.

Sometimes the road
we never meant to take
leads us
to the only place
we could have become
who we are.

But even happiness
has its ghosts.

Even a beautiful life
is haunted
by the beautiful lives
that never happened.

Somewhere,
there is a version of us
who never left.

Another
who stayed too long.

One who spoke.
One who listened.
One who knew
when to hold on.

One who knew
when to let go.

And somewhere
beyond the reach
of every choice
we ever made,
there is the life
we imagined
at the beginning.

Still untouched.

Still perfect
in the way
only an unlived thing
can be.

Perhaps that is why
old photographs
can break our hearts
more thoroughly
than graves.

A grave tells us
something has ended.

A photograph
shows us
how beautifully
it began.

It gives us back
the very thing
time has taken,
but only long enough
to remind us
we cannot keep it.

And now,
looking at these two people,
I find myself
overwhelmed
by a tenderness
I do not know
where to put.

I want to warn them.

Not about the great catastrophes.
Those, perhaps,
we are never meant
to see coming.

But about the smaller things.

The careless word
that will live for decades
inside someone else's heart.

The apology
that will remain
unspoken
until there is no one left
to hear it.

The thousand opportunities
to be gentle
that will pass unnoticed
because tomorrow
seems so certain.

I want to tell them
that love
is not merely something
we find.

It is something
we must keep finding
in the person
who stands before us,
even as the years
make strangers
of the people
we once knew by heart.

I want to tell them
that the children
they have not yet met
will remember things
they never intended
to teach them.

That happiness
is not a possession.

That being right
is sometimes
a very lonely way
to live.

That the future
does not owe us
the beautiful ending
we have imagined
for ourselves.

But they are smiling.

And the flowers
are still alive.

And there is something
so achingly innocent
about the way
they hold each other
that I cannot bring myself
to interrupt.

Who am I
to steal their beginning
simply because
I have seen
what came after?

Who am I
to tell them
that some of their dreams
will die quietly,
that others
will become burdens,
that the years
will give them things
they never asked for
and take from them
things they thought
could never be lost?

They have not yet
become the people
who will hurt
and be hurt.

They have not yet
made the choices
that will lead them
away from this moment.

They are simply
two people
who love each other,
standing in the light,
believing
that love
will be enough.

And for this moment,
perhaps it is.

Perhaps the tragedy
is not that beginnings
are full of promises
life cannot keep.

Perhaps it is
that we must believe
in those promises
to begin at all.

That every life
requires a little faith
in a future
that has made us
no guarantees.

That every beautiful beginning
contains within it
the possibility
of a terrible ending,
and we step forward
anyway.

We open the door.

We take the hand.

We write the first word
upon the waiting page.

And somewhere,
years from now,
someone will look back
at the person
we are today

and see
what we cannot.

The light.

The hope.

The thousand futures
still gathered
around our feet.

They will know
which dreams survived.

Which promises broke.

Which people stayed.

Which people
we would have given
anything
to keep.

And perhaps
they will wish
they could reach
through the years
and tell us
to hold this moment
a little longer.

But we will not hear them.

We will be too busy
being alive.

Too busy
believing
in everything
that has not yet happened.

And the page
will still be white.

And the pen
will still be waiting.

And we will begin,

as we always do,

with no idea
how far
we will have to travel

to discover
what becomes
of all this hope.

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Poetry by Britt Wolfe: