Sometimes, in the middle of a beautiful moment, by Yara Zalzal

Sometimes, in the middle of a beautiful moment, I begin worrying about its ending. I am somewhere I have wanted to be, with someone whose company I love, and already part of my mind is asking when we can do this again. I want reassurance that the feeling will remain available. I begin making plans before the afternoon is over. It is difficult to admit how often I ask happiness for a guarantee. 

Perhaps, I am afraid that something brief will become painful to remember. Perhaps, I want the future to confirm that what I am experiencing matters. If it continues, I can trust it. If it ends, I start questioning what it was. But an ending cannot tell the whole truth about what preceded it. A friendship or love that faded may still have given us years of understanding. A place we left may have been a good home. 

There are moments of tenderness that were sincere even when the people involved could not build a life around them. 

I want to be able to acknowledge that without using it as a reason to remain attached to what no longer meets me. Some things deserve to be remembered warmly and left where they happened. 

I am still learning how to enjoy something without asking it to become permanent. Howe to let an afternoon be an afternoon, with its light, its conversation, its small unrepeatable details. 

It seems a great deal to ask of a beautiful moment that it should also protect me from ever losing it.