The Life That Was Always Yours

It didn't arrive the way
you thought it would.

No trumpet.
No clear sign.
No moment where the path
lit up obligingly
from start to finish.

Just a quiet Tuesday
where you did the thing
that felt true,

and then another,
and then another,
until one day you looked back
and saw that all those Tuesdays
had become something —

not the life you planned.
Better.

The one that could only have been built
by someone exactly like you,
making exactly those choices,
in exactly that order.

The one that was always yours.
It was just waiting
for you to stop looking for it
somewhere else.