A Witness of Time

I cannot stop time,
cannot turn it back,
cannot hold it,
even though I want to.

I look at my family,
from babies to those in their eighties.
A toddler running with muddy hands,
laughing while chasing Grandma,
a teenager standing on the edge of becoming, in between,
adults who still feel like children.

Time flashes backward to birthday candles glowing,
and we are reminded to keep our germs to ourselves,
late-night conversations, sitting on the dryer
in the upstairs closet so no one else hears,
hands held, bangs cut, tears wiped away,
laughter that once filled a room.

I want to press pause,
just for a moment,
long enough to hear everything,
to stay inside their lives with them,
long enough to say,
I wish we could all stay here forever.

Outside, the spring sun shines.
Across the road, the park is full,
An Easter celebration is unfolding.
Children wear soft bunny ears,
laughter rising and tangling in the sky.

They run in bright loops across the grass,
parents calling after them,
a scavenger hunt winding through the small forest,
feet moving along the trail in search of an orange lion and a green bear,
to earn paper cups filled with Easter eggs,
colourful and wrapped in foil.

And then, just like that,
the park is still,
as if it never happened.

Everyone has gone home.

I stand at my front window,
feeling the ache
of how fully everything arrives
and how completely it leaves.

I do not know how to hold it,
the birthdays and the small hands,
the conversations I will one day miss,
the ordinary moments that are not ordinary at all.

Maybe I am not meant to hold it.

Maybe I am meant to witness it as it passes,
to notice,
to love it while it is here,
to let it matter.

Because nothing stays.

Somehow,
That is what makes it
so impossibly precious.