The Promise I Keep Making to Myself

There is a promise
I keep folding into my pocket
like a small square of paper
softened by the heat of my thigh,
creased by forgetting.

I do not write it down.
It writes itself
in the quiet tremor
that passes through me
each time I stand at the edge
of my own becoming
and step back.

The promise is simple.

It is not loud.
It does not arrive with trumpets
or a new calendar.

It comes
like dawn comes—
without asking the night
for permission.

I promise myself
that I will live awake.

That I will not barter
my hours
for applause
or the small currency
of being understood.

I promise
to choose the deeper river
even when the surface sparkles
with easy light.

But I am human,
and the surface is persuasive.

It glints
like a dragonfly wing
over still water,
like the polished bone
of an old ambition.

So I forget.

I forget the river beneath the river,
the one that moves without noise
under rock and root,
carving the earth
with a patience
older than language.

I wake some mornings
with a heaviness in my chest
that feels like sediment—
all the unsaid words,
all the postponed tenderness,
all the times I told myself
“tomorrow.”

And the promise stirs.

It does not scold me.
It does not accuse.

It is a hand
on my sternum,
warm and steady.

Live awake.

Look at the sky
as if it were your first inheritance.

Listen to the sparrow
as if it were speaking
your true name.

There was a time
I thought the promise meant
doing more.

Climbing higher.
Reaching farther.
Building something visible
from the raw timber
of my hunger.

But mountains
taught me otherwise.

I once stood before a range
that split the horizon
like a sentence too vast
to finish.

The peaks did not rush.
They did not advertise
their height.

They simply stood,
wearing snow
like a quiet crown.

And I understood—
the promise is not
to be taller than the world.

It is to be rooted
and still rising.

It is to let the wind
move through me
without tearing me apart.

There are nights
when the sky opens
like a cathedral of ink,
and the stars appear
as if someone
has pierced the dark
with a thousand careful questions.

On those nights
I feel how small I am,
and how infinite.

The promise expands.

Live awake
to the fact
that you are made
of the same ash and fire
as those distant lights.

Do not shrink yourself
to fit a room
that cannot hold your sky.

But also—
do not mistake
your spark
for the sun.

I keep promising
to forgive myself
for being unfinished.

For being a draft
with margins
still whispering corrections.

I promise
to stop measuring my worth
against the speed
of others.

The oak does not envy
the lightning.

The moon does not apologize
for waxing slowly
into fullness.

Why then
do I rush my own becoming
as if I were late
for a train
that never existed?

There are days
when I fail the promise.

I scroll instead of breathe.
I compare instead of create.
I armor myself
in opinions
instead of opening
like a field
to rain.

And yet—
the promise waits.

It waits
the way soil waits
through winter.

Silent.
Uncomplaining.
Trusting
the thaw.

It says:
Begin again.

Begin
with the next breath.

Begin
with the next honest word.

Begin
with the small act
of noticing
how light falls
across your own hands.

I promise
to protect the child in me
who still believes
that wonder is not naïve
but necessary.

The child who lies
on warm grass
and counts satellites
like migrating fireflies.

The child who thinks
every horizon
is an invitation.

Somewhere along the way
I traded that child
for a sharper version of myself—
more efficient,
less astonished.

But the cosmos
does not reward efficiency.

It rewards presence.

It rewards
the quiet courage
to stand beneath its vastness
and say,
“I am here.”

So I promise
to be here.

Not in the rehearsed future.
Not in the edited past.

Here—
where my pulse
meets the air
and makes a rhythm
no one else can hear.

I promise
to speak gently
to the body
that carries me
through gravity.

To feed it
as I would feed a garden.
To let it rest
as I would let a field
lie fallow
after harvest.

For too long
I treated myself
like a machine
with a deadline.

But I am not a clock.

I am a season.

I am monsoon
and drought,
flowering
and decay.

The promise deepens.

It is no longer
about achievement.

It is about alignment.

About standing
in the center of my own sky
and allowing the constellations
to arrange themselves
without my interference.

There is a constellation
I return to—
not one mapped in textbooks,
but one I feel
just behind my ribs.

It is made
of quiet decisions:

To tell the truth
even when my voice shakes.

To love
without demanding permanence.

To leave
when staying would mean
betraying my own horizon.

Each star
is a choice.

Each choice
a small ignition.

And together
they form a pattern
I can follow
when the night thickens.

I keep promising
to trust that pattern.

To believe
that even my detours
are part of a larger arc.

Rivers curve
not because they are lost,
but because the land
asks them to.

Perhaps my own bends
are not failures
but conversations
with terrain I do not yet understand.

The promise widens
until it includes
not only me.

I begin to see
how my wakefulness
touches others.

How one honest act
ripples outward
like a pebble
into a still pond.

How one moment of courage
can loosen
the fear
in another’s chest.

The cosmos is not distant.

It is intimate.

It is the shared breath
between strangers.
It is the gravity
that keeps us
from drifting
into indifference.

So I promise
to remember
that I am woven
into something larger.

That my smallest kindness
is a thread
in a tapestry
I will never fully see.

There will be more mornings
when I forget.

More evenings
when I collapse
into doubt
like a star
that has burned
through its own fuel.

But even collapsing stars
become something—
nebula,
dust,
the seed of another sun.

Nothing is wasted
in the universe.

Perhaps nothing is wasted
in me.

The promise I keep making
is not a contract.

It is a returning.

A turning of my face
toward the light
again
and again
and again.

It is the quiet vow
to inhabit my days
as if they were sacred ground.

To step softly.
To look deeply.
To love without rehearsing
the ending.

I do not know
how many breaths
I have been given.

But I know this—

each one
is a doorway.

And the promise
is simply
to walk through
awake.