Please excuse me
if I say the wrong thing,
it is only my first time being human
and I am trying to get this right.

I breathe in and the sun rises,
I exhale, and the world turns.

Someone once told me
we should leave this world
better than we found it.
Shouldn’t we do the same
for one another?

Wisdom is embracing the cycle of things.
The birds have gone now,
but they will come back.
We are too small and brief to see it,
sometimes, I think,
but I am learning
it can be felt in moments
of hope and love.

Bethanie Reid is a queer poet and artist from Saint Louis, Missouri. She is a student of nature with
aspirations of changing the cultural narrative via a philosophy of compassion and care. As an artist, she
has dabbled in other disciplines over the years, but her second language has always been poetry. Her
work focuses largely on the human experiences of vulnerability and connection. Her poems have found
homes in Soft Quarterly as well as local STL literary zines Bad Jacket and A Moment.

Follow her on
Instagram @bethhsalts to learn more.

Bethanie Reid