I'm Italy Mone and this is the Slowdown.

There are times when we define ourselves by what is missing or at least I know I can.

Is it something I need? Sometimes it's something I wish for. I wish for so much.

I miss the people who are no longer living. I want them back. I miss items I've lost

or letters I once burned and I wish I hadn't. I wish certain trees would go back and there

are parts of me that I wish would return to.

I miss my certainty. Sometimes my flirtatiousness. Sometimes my kindness even. My belief in

the silver lining. It's not that I'm not hopeful. It's just that there are times when

I miss that smiling girl who'd put on her jeans and walk down the street and not expect

danger or not presume the man hiking in the woods where I'm hiking might bring me

harm. I miss feeling safe even if I wasn't safe. Just the other day I was walking in a

little 26 acre pocket park near my house. I walked toward the little spring that's called

the blue hole for its blue hue and its depth. As I was watching the dragonflies along the

surface and the toads along the edge I noticed movement on one of the other trails. I stopped

still. I found myself completely hiding until the person passed me. I don't like fear. I wish

I didn't have it. I wish I was braver than all get out. But like many women hiking alone,

I've been bothered by men on trails before and I didn't have the energy for it. And so I hid.

Here is where I admit to you that I wish that having common sense didn't translate into

being scared. I think about safety, a great deal, my own, my beloveds, and I'm the first to tell a

child not to walk alone, not to hike by yourself, not to go anywhere where someone might find you

harm you. I wish we could do away with all the fear, but at some point in my life I was taught to

fear because not having fear got me into trouble. Today's poem is an exploration of the end of

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