twenty-seven

and so it is. twenty-seven years. 

completed. 

i can't help but feel extremely blessed, and inspired. i want to thank everyone who sent wishes and love my way and who have shared in my past twenty-seven years.

i smile knowing it's only just begun. and a shiver of excitement tingles in my spine from the openness that is my tomorrow. 

i have no idea where this next year will take me, or where it won't. but i want to put in words the things i want and or need to remember for the next 27 years. 

so here we go…
i need to remember:

to listen. more than i speak. even if it's just to the wind. 

to smile and breathe.

to find comfort in new beginnings.

appreciate those in my life without expectation.

open my heart everyday to the world.

be self-forgetting in my desires.

i must remember to understand with my head and my heart.

to never carry hate on my shoulder or my tongue. 

i want to always remember the way mary's yard smelled of lilac trees and fabric softener and the sound of the wind chime that hung outside my window.

i cannot forget:

how easily moments can vanish.

how long careless mistakes can last. 

how perfectly my heart beats when full of hope.

i must always remember:

the unforgiving adolescence of my first love and the scars it left behind.

to remember "when it isn't…"

that it's all just a mountain, and i have to keep climbing.

remember nothing is promised or guaranteed.

that nothing is more unrecognizable than my own inner beauty. and that i need to see it in myself and others everyday. 

i cannot forget that without my past, however painful some parts may seem, i am unmovable because of it.

remember:

the pieces of my heart i gave away and to not host bitterness in their absence.

to laugh. to live.

to always be patient.

to never give up.

i must never forget the stillness of mortality and to always move mindfully in it's presence. 

i want to remember the promise of honesty and the ignorance of fear.

to hold in my words the purest form of my being.

to fall in love with chaos.  

and last but not least...to stay forever young.