"If" by Sarah Jeanne Browne

If the sky can change hues of colors

Do I pay my dues to the bank tellers of broken dreams?

If roses wilt overtime

Can I still find the will to rise?

If love can endure all

Why do I trip over the unknown?

If there’s no way out of a situation

Why do I still have hope?

If there’s no God or anyone running the universe

Why do I feel like the stars are my home?

If I cannot fill a teacup that spills

Leaving nothing left to quench one’s thirst

What fills the void?

If I forget the sound of your voice

Were you ever here?

If I find the final gift you leave me on the doorstep of my despair

Will I be blinded by the sun’s glare? 

If adrenaline meets the doe frozen in the middle of the road

Do I place a cone on the corner of the landslide where life and death draw a dotted line…

But I have an eraser

Does shame erase the mask?

Does every human have a task?

If so…

If the key won’t unlock my heart

Would I curse the skies

Want to end my life?

I carry chains of sin ignoring those like Tiny Tim

Who return evermore to remind me that life will not even the score

I will always want more

The sun taunts the moon’s grief for watching over living things

And that grief undoes everything because we feel it too

The world is stuck on snooze

And yet it asks, “Who are you?” If only I knew…

But I don’t want to grow within the grief

Assign everything a meaning

Nor be a machine

Nor a martyr 

Nor a messenger of what could be

But I’d lose my mind trying to get over you

Time doesn’t tell

It keeps its secrets

As does the grim reaper

Either made up in our minds that there is some design

Or that we fail to see the truth

The random is more beautiful than knowing what to do

Because you are authentically you

Life’s purpose is just the color blue

That teardrops fall upward to the sky

The rain will not say why it takes our cries

We see the ground upside down

But it’s reversed with our eyes

Yet the unseen brilliance does not budge

I still laugh at how you won’t swear but say “fudge”

If only I could see your smile

You’d stay for a while, and we’d talk like nothing happened

You didn’t leave; you just packed a bag of self-pity

To throw to the bottom of the sea, telling me to leave it be

I look up after the longest time and see your face in the clouds

And that you are still mine

I could chase after you

But the clouds will soon depart

If only…

No, don’t ask why or wonder what could be

Just take my heart.

Remember me as I am.

Take the meadowlarks.

Take the sunrise.

Take the smell of home, of grandma baking pie.

Take these hands that cannot reach so high.

Take the lullabies you sing.

Take the doorbell that will no longer ring.

Take the tears that sting.

Take everything.

About

Sarah Jeanne Browne is a wisdom collector who assisted Tiny Buddha with such projects and then formed her own philosophy; writer for Forbes and other popular self-help sites (and now deconstructs self-help as the industry can be misleading); speaker for organizations such as The Peal Center, Pennsylvania Youth Leadership Network, The Woodlands Foundation, Reimagine, various podcasts and more; activist for human and animal rights; innovator and problem solver such as creating a way to connect with kids for EndCAN - LOVES: Listen, Open Up, Validate, Explain, and Solve Together; brand and social media consultant; and lived experience speaker and writer with bipolar, dyscalculia, and AuDHD.

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