instruction manual

We are the roses

We are the thorns

The mountain top sunsets

The New York City horns

We are the barefooted hotel-carpet walkers

We are the cold butter morning toast spreaders

The wheel-spinning, token-moving, jump-ahead-3, Life playing girls and boys.

The losers

The winners

The frustrated finishers

Most of us have read the 27 page long instruction manual, but no one can remember what’s on 11.

But we all faintly remember it was titled High School.

But I do remember page 14 and the fact that it says “Life is better once you pass the square labeled WELCOME TO COLLEGE” three separate times

I’ve always known life is more than a game though.

It’s that 18 letter word you always forget how to spell

The beautiful complications of being in an unfamiliar city.

Me trying to do the splits

Life is stopping every once and a while and wondering “what is life and why am I here?”

and finding that it’s hiding in things like disposable cameras and 2am prayers.

It’s in closed eyes and open bibles

In closed bibles and open minds

The instruction manual ended with “life is to be lived”

And there’s a reason life and live

are one letter off

are found on the same page of the dictionary

are connected

So let go of the spinner, put down your plastic pawn

And go swim and jump and dance

Because the only way you can write the word life

is with decades of Sunday walks

and years and years of star gazing. 

F. Sharpe