Chuck Peterson
The Unfinished Present
Memories are windows
of old glass—
warmed by sunlight,
warped by time.
Some don’t leave.
They wait
for a smell,
a song,
a touch.
Sometimes they unravel me.
Sometimes they keep me company.
Some memories I keep hidden,
folded deep inside—
too sacred
or too fragile
to speak aloud.
Sometimes I need other people
to carry the parts
I can\'t hold myself.
And there are memories
that belong to many—
shared laughter around a table,
grief passed hand to hand,
stories retold
until the missing pieces come back.
When memory falters,
it takes more than one heart
to hold it.
It takes a village
to gather what was lost
and make it whole again.
My memory holds every wound.
The joy—I know it happened,
but slipped out of reach.
Maybe the quiet lesson
is not to live looking over our shoulder,
searching for answers
in what has already gone—
but to find joy here,
in the unfinished present,
in the life still asking
to be lived.
Because sometimes
a life moving forward
cannot be fully understood
by looking back at all.