How to be happy for the unfolding
that has been, that has,
until this moment, seemed meaningful
and inevitable?

Nine years ago, you chose experience
over love, and boy did you get it.

A swashbuckling education in emotional travel;
around the world in eighty greys–

vulnerability, discovery, loss,
mortality, shame, error.

Yet it’s a decision you continue
to make like a contract, annually
renewing over and over this strange,
lonely sort of freedom.

~ Julia Daye