The Point

"What is the point?” She asks me. Questions

shimmer behind her dark blue eyes. They remind

me of a Tennessee river bed. I breathe in deeply.

The smell of pine overwhelms my senses.


I know by the quiver in her voice that she is

asking  about something so much deeper than

the point of us. The point of this. Something

far more complicated than most care to comprehend.


She is asking about life. The very reason

for our being. She wants to know why she exists.

I am still far to young to have all of the answers,

But I tell her what I know to be true.


“The point is to improve. To create yourself,

and leave the world around you better than

you found it. And love… like it’s the last thing

in the world that you will ever do. “


She takes it all in. It sounds so easy when you

say it with confidence, but she knows by my

lack of affection and fleeting glances that

sometimes things really are easier said than done.