Revisionist Poetry – The Road That Wasn’t There – Journey’s Openings, v.3

At first,
we wait for certainty.

For the green light.
For the invitation.
For someone to point toward the horizon
and say,

There.
That is your life.

But the world is rarely
so generous with directions.

Sometimes the beginning
is nothing more
than a loose stone beneath your shoe,
a road splitting in two,
a door left slightly open.

You choose.

Not because you know,
but because you don’t.

And afterward
you call it fate.

The path will not stay faithful to you.
It will climb into weather,
sink into shadow,
curl back upon itself.

There will be bridges
you thought would hold
and fields
you never expected to cross.

Somewhere along the way
the map inside your head
will stop matching the land.

Good.

Let it.

There are things
a map cannot tell you:

how rain sounds
when you’re finally moving,
how a strange town
can begin to feel like home,
how losing the road
can sometimes mean
finding the horizon.

Maybe destiny
isn’t waiting at the end.

Maybe it is the name
we give the trail
after we’ve survived it.

So take the turn.

Even the wrong one.

Especially the wrong one.

The road that wasn’t there
yesterday
may be the one
that changes everything.