Kenne David & Kenne George in Bryan, Texas, Many Years Ago
We watched our children grow old
the way you watch a city rise around you,
street by street, believing you are standing still.
Their faces sharpened, then softened.
They learned the weight of names,
the cost of leaving,
the strange relief of returning.
We were busy loving them—
that constant labor—
tying shoes, lifting boxes,
listening for footsteps in the dark.
Meanwhile, time passed through us
like a second language we were learning
without knowing it had a grammar.
One afternoon we caught our reflection
in the glass of their lives
and saw it clearly:
the quiet accumulation,
the patience etched into bone,
the years carried without ceremony.
We had grown old
the way a house does—
slowly, while sheltering others—
until one day the light fell differently
and revealed what had always been there.
— kenne
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