Before I knew you,
I thought of ponds as lakes.
And then,
there was the day you pointed out the window and said,
“these are the lakes I grew up going to.
See how you cannot see the other side?
They were formed by glaciers when the earth was new.”
And there it was,
right in front of me,
the endless expanse of water
that I would have said had to be the ocean.
And it was like I was being carved,
by you,
into a new version of myself
at the edge of this lake.
Someone who understands
that lakes can have edges
I might not be able to see.
Someone who knows that discovering that,
with you,
is like watching the earth form,
with you.
Wow. This feels at once like a wisdom folk tale and a discussion during a drive. The speaker’s realization being at once about the universe and themselves.