THE LEAP

Before sunrise, the boxes wait,

stacked like quiet ambitions by the door.

You’ve spent weeks stalking this moment,

circling it, testing its scent,

wondering if you’re the hunter

or the one hunted.

The move, the job, the new skyline,

they gleam like something alive.

You imagine catching them,

holding them steady,

taming the wild pulse of change

with the steady breath of purpose.

But the truth is, every chase

ends different than you plan.

You don’t beg to capture the future,

but it does seem to rush past you,

and you run until your lungs

learn a new rhythm.

You miss what you had,

and that missing

becomes its own kind of compass.

There are moments when you falter,

in the echo of an empty apartment,

in the flicker of a computer screen

that doesn’t yet know your name.

You think the hunt is over,

that you’ve lost the trail.

Then one morning,

in a café that doesn’t yet feel familiar,

you look up and realize,

the light through the window

has stopped feeling strange.

You’ve become something new

without noticing the moment it happened.

The hunt was never about capture.

It was the leaving,

the crossing,

the slow unfolding of courage

as you learned to call

the unfamiliar place

your own.