The Unturning Page

Imagine reading a book with no way to turn back the page,
each sentence final, each margin closing before the eye,
the plot a river running only forward toward its age,
and every chapter ending with the small word — goodbye.
You would read the syllables the way a thirsty man drinks rain,
mouthing each vowel like it were the last one to be found,
letting the noun and its shadow soften in the brain,
holding the period before it settled on the ground.
That is the shape of a life, though we pretend it is not so,
we skim, we scroll, we let the hours run beneath our feet,
we treat the paragraph of morning as a thing we already know,
and wake surprised the story is already half complete.
Every moment passes once and then belongs to the air,
carried off by wind before the hand can reach and hold,
the laugh, the glance, the sentence spoken half unaware —
the page is turning even while the ink is still not cold.
Every word we speak lays down a small and stubborn scar,
kind or careless, it will keep its shape inside another,
long after we forget the room, the reason, or the hour,
the sentence lives, and speaks again, in some remembered brother.
So choose what matters — not tomorrow, not when time allows,
not when the calendar is kinder or the weather has agreed,
but here, inside the sentence you are living even now,
before it settles into memory and quietly recedes.
Do not save the tenderness for some more perfect afternoon,
do not defer the phone call, the apology, the praise,
the window of the ordinary closes soon enough, and soon
becomes a shelf of afterthoughts you cannot rearrange.
Memory is honest — it will not spare you what you missed,
it will return the unmet moment with a quiet, level gaze,
the door you did not walk through, the hand you did not kiss,
the good you could have done inside the ordinary days.
So read the book — this book, this breath, this line, this room, this friend —
as though the page is turning even as your eye descends,
because it is, and always was, and there is no rewind at the end.
Imagine, then, how carefully you’d read. Now, live. Now, tend.
…
DCG

Imagine reading a book, with no way to turn back the page. How carefully would you read it? That’s life. Every moment passes once. Every word leaves a mark. So choose what matters. before it becomes a memory. Imagine

— anonymous