JUMP

Soundtrack

It’s so cold today, though the rain has finally stopped for the first time this year. The wind was blowing a hoolie, but my daughter and I ate breakfast outside with burning cheeks, laughing into the cold.

Later, on my walk, the wood was exactly as it always is, the dark green smell of wet earth and leaves. Light slipped through the narrow places, never lighting the path fully, and I realised how that has always been enough.

Near a bend where the birches grow close, pale bark peeling in thin curls, I slowed without deciding to. A quiet rose, familiar, like the moment in Adlestrop where no one leaves and no one comes and nothing happens except that you notice where you are.

For so long I believed the fire I carried pointed outward, meant to find someone, a moment that would gather everything into meaning.

But trees do not wait. They are already alive with movement I cannot see, sap rising without witness, growth happening without certainty. The wind shook water from the branches onto my skin as I watched the leaves reaching toward the clouds, and I laughed out loud, as if the trees leaned close enough to whisper:

What are you waiting for?

I walked faster then, breath deepening, boots finding rhythm on the mud, noticing how easily the ordinary held everything at once: thoughts of dinner and tax bills and unanswered messages alongside a brightness that felt almost sacred.

And then the words came.

I luh. I love. Love.

Love itself. The fire that asks only to burn, not to belong.

Instead of holding it close, I let it move.

I left the wood and ran into the field, into the light, letting the feeling go out into the dilating day, into widening air and widening arms, into breath and motion, flowing like water finding its way back to the sea.

Without thinking I spun like my dog when he refuses the lead, circling in delighted defiance, choosing freedom for one more moment.

I spun. Fool that I am.

And I loved it all.

The mud, the cold air, the high wind, the field, the clouds racing overhead.

I love. Life.

The pain, the breaking, the blood, the running, the walking, the salt. I take it all, because this is what it means to live with the fire, not safely beside it or warming your hands from a distance.

Jump. Jump in.

Because despite everything, I cannot stop the joy from rising, without reason, without permission. Without a clear path. Without certainty.

I am coming for the life waiting in plain sight.

Not because the path is clear, but because I came for me. I am done standing at the edge of my own life.

I give myself permission.

To wander, wonder. To live with the fire fully lit.