Enough Good Days | Poetry

I’ve thought about the future enough

to have built a road towards it,

pebble after careful pebble,

with the blueprint of my years

folded inside my pocket.

But one day, inevitably,

I’ll wake in a funny white room

and none of it will matter.

Not the distance.

Not the wrong turns.

Not the tiles I missed

because something else caught my eye.

I keep mistaking

living life without regrets

for getting every decision right.

But in the final moments of life,

I doubt I’ll care

how closely I followed the plan.

I’ll only want enough courage

to manage a smile.

When the memories of a lifetime

pass before my eyes,

let there be enough good days

for me to take my pick.

Enough ridiculous laughter

to replace my heartbeats

for a little while.

And when I fall

and strike my last wink,

I hope someone is there

to place beneath my head

a pillow stuffed with pride.

As the pendulum loses its rhythm,

slower now,

then slower still,

I don’t want a grand monologue

waiting on my tongue.

Let my eyes do the talking.

Let them say

I gave away enough warmth

for some of it to find me again

and spare my body

one final shiver.

Maybe a meaningful life

isn’t a straight road at all.

Maybe a life well lived

has weeds between the stones,

mud on its shoes,

and several places

it never meant to visit.

Making peace with death

might simply be admitting

that every road ends,

even the one we walked

as if it never would.

And leaving a legacy?

Perhaps it is only this:

a little of your warmth

staying behind

in somebody else.

So when life and death

finally share the same room,

I hope I don’t waste my last minute

counting what went wrong.

I hope living life without regrets

turns out to mean

having enough love behind me

that I can let go without fear.

And when I breathe out

for the very last time,

may that breath rise like a balloon,

full of mortality,

full of all I was,

and, somehow, content.