Four- The number of walls that enclose me.

One- the ceiling that I hold on my shoulders as I navigate the maze of walls. Each dead end hangs an array of pictures from my life. Telling my story and the story of others.

Day after day I have to retrace my steps. And day after day hope dies in me. There are those day I go without seeing a dead end, when those walls are full of the good times captured in ice. Then there are the days life brings me down, when every turn is wrong and the footprints that lead me there disappear. When all four walls enclose me in a claustrophobic space full of anxiety and pessimistic thoughts, so claustrophobic that I have to stop thinking, lose myself in an abyss until I’m left with nothing. No hope.

Yet I still continue. I get up, break a wall and leave the memory of bitter loss behind. I run like a horse in a meadow, free. I jump the hurdles because life is not a math problem that always has a solution; it is long division that never ends, snaking out the numbers and days. I will jump those hurdles even when they grab me and plummet me to the ground. I will follow the map in my chest that leads me to the starry light. Someday I will leave this maze.

I will run free like the horse in the meadow

One day I will run my last mile

One day I will jump my last hurdle

One day I will break down my last wall

One day that division problem will end

And all my perseverance will be worth it

Once I reach the light

And this hope is what lights my way…