Kiss The Girl

We keep a quiet drawer labeled later,
neatly folding our boldest intentions inside,
like shirts we are afraid to wrinkle in daylight,
like courage that prefers a calendar to a moment.

We say soon with a steady voice,
as if time signed a contract with us.

I know the script, I have read it before,
tomorrow is not promised, we nod, we agree, we move on,
yet I still catch myself building altars to a future version,
a man who somehow has more permission than I do now.

He will be braver, I tell myself,
he will have fewer reasons to hesitate.

The thought lingers just long enough,
before it starts sounding like a call,
not loud, not urgent, but steady and persistent,
a quiet nudge I can no longer ignore.

Ask the girl out while it still feels uncertain,
or risk the moment and kiss her,

launch the podcast before it feels ready,
take the trip before it makes perfect sense,
start the work that scares you a little,
say yes to the road you can’t fully map.

you don’t need permission,
you just need a step,

build something before you feel qualified,
choose the life that asks more of you,
before the moment passes,
before you call it later.

As if the path ever clears itself,
as if risk politely waits its turn.

But later is a clever illusion,
it dresses like wisdom and speaks like patience,
it convinces us we are being responsible,
while quietly stealing the only thing we truly hold.

This moment, breathing and unfinished,
this fragile, unrepeatable now.

Because maybe the life of our dreams never arrives,
maybe it shifts, or chooses another road entirely,
and if we have lived only for that distant horizon,
we wake up strangers to the life already in our hands.

So I am learning, slowly and imperfectly,
to stop negotiating with a future that owes me nothing.

To step into the risk while it is still inconvenient,
to choose presence even when it feels unprepared,
to let this moment be enough to act within,
not because tomorrow is uncertain, though it is,

but because now is the only place life ever happens,
and it does not wait for us to arrive ready.

One day we will run out of laters,
and be left holding a life we never actually lived.

So be in it now,
before it becomes later.

Kiss the girl