Arrow Rock Literary Journal

Everyone I know

Is learning to let go

Of something

Or someone

They love.

Hope becomes unclear,

And then it reappears.

Life is sweet

And out of control.

Like trees we’re stretched over ourselves,

Love inscribed in our cells.

We’re falling,

Leaving our rings to those left behind.

We’re trying to die well.

Teach us all that that means:

To see things of eternal weight,

To glimpse joy in the in-between;

To take life as it comes—

The beauty and the misery.

Then, on our dying days,

May we and the trees sing praise

For how you taught our lifetime

To be a song.

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Gia Mesz is a Lindenwood senior, a storywriter, and a constant daydreamer, pursuing a Creative Writing degree and a certificate in Intercultural Fluency. Her writing voice is tender and playful, appealing to the imagination and speaking purposively to the childlike soul within every reader. (Don’t tell anyone, but she’s also a mermaid.)