Poem: What It Means to Be Alive

By Allison Stein

As a new year allows us to refocus our perspectives, I am inspired to share with you my poem “What It Means to Be Alive.” Enjoy!

What It Means to Be Alive

God, teach me to spark the friction of a steadfast flame,
To unlock the burning elixir of a love too raw to name;

To trust the wind, believe in the possibilities I create,
To defy my own gravity, rewrite the tangled words of fate;

To channel the freedom of a silent snowflake's pirouette,
To unearth the heart buried inside a cold silhouette;

To excavate intrinsic passion, the staccato beat of my soul,
To collect the stardust of another spirit until my own is whole;

To send a lilting prayer through the portal of moonbeams,
To align crystal constellations of faraway dreams;

To splash in opalescent waters, relish sunshine's kiss,
To outrun the cinnamon shoreline, taste adrenaline and bliss;

To keep my chin above doubt's whitecaps, insatiable and immense,
To be the whisper of hope in a life of silence;

To etch my initials in the sand, grasp imagination's energy,
To leave footprints tracing this journey as one last lonely elegy;

To forge a legacy strong enough to survive,
To remember why this moment matters—what it means to be alive.