There are tiny slivers of this time that I try to pick up and pocket, but you know me. I have no balance anymore. I fall over and away from my intended desire, and there I am, left with nothing but lint.

How is it we’re here already? My daughter will be thirteen this summer, and I won’t be. I think that’s what’s mildly discombobulating. It’s no longer the nineties, and I sometimes have no idea how to navigate this world.

Pandemics and riots and people calling out others from the safety of their computer screens when all I want to do is watch another episode of Rocko’s Modern Life.

But then I hear it. From where does my help come from? It’s a deep down noise, a guttural expression of truth in a world built on lies. It’s the rudder that leads me away from the burden of senseless nonsense, from those who thrive on deception and being deceived.

But now I see. His face. The clear outline of something that hovers over and inside every single heart on the planet.

I heard an analogy the other day. How every human has to play “the game,” this one called life. And how some people make up their own rules, jumping two steps ahead, skipping a turn. Knocking the other game pieces off their places. But there are some of us who play it by the rule book, the one written by the person who created the game. How quickly we’re looked at as suffering from some sort of hopeless delusion, when in reality, we’re the only ones who understand how to make it to the end.

My daughter is turning thirteen this summer. And I am not. I sit sometimes and watch as the edges of everything blurs in my line of vision. As these tiny slivers float away.