I painted this piece because I believe great grandmas holding babies
is what the universe does when it forgets to hide its magic.
You don’t just see a moment like this: you ache it all the way through,
like something whoa-y is brushing past you.
Like grief and wonder are spooning in the same bed.

It’s not just the age.
It’s the wind switching directions.
It’s the hourglass tipping both ways.
A beginning meeting the echo of its own end.
A baby, still steaming from the stars,
in the arms of a woman stitched together by goodbyes
who whispers a benediction into new skin.

Nobody is leaving here.
Nobody is arriving.
It’s just two fragile bodies caught up in the ache of presence.
Skin on skin. Soft on softened.

We are so good at spending our days surviving we often forget how to stay.
We sprint through the miracle of life like we're late for something else.
We brace for the ending while the blessing is still talking.
We keep asking what comes next instead of kneeling reverently in what’s here.

But this life —
this breath,
this body,
this hand finding another hand —
it’s not the hallway.
It’s the room.

And we don’t pass through rooms.

We are here to walk like pilgrims.
To ache like saints.
To linger like romantics.

To go so slow that the beautiful things
have time to reach for our faces and kiss our cheeks and say:
Hello. I Love You. Goodbye.

“Hello. I Love You. Goodbye.”
36×48 Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

The attached signed poem is on 150 GSM thick cotton paper.