Breathing Between Moments
[Poem]
Some mornings
Coffee tastes like courage
Other days
It’s just something warm
To hold
We stand in kitchen doorways
Scrolling through other people’s victories
Trying to remember
Where we put
Our own
You ever notice
How the smallest decisions
End up steering whole years
Sideways?
Life keeps happening
In the hallway
Between the plans we made
And the ones we
Dropped
In the long deep breath
Before we answer
In the “wait, hold on”
Right before we
Stop
We keep learning how to live
While we live it
And it’s messy
And it’s honest
And it’s ours
We collect versions of ourselves
Old passwords
Old photos
Shirts that almost still fit
Stories that almost do
I used to think
One day I’d “arrive”
Now I think arriving
Is just agreeing to
Keep going
Some days I am patient
With strangers
With traffic
And not with the person
In the mirror
Nobody taught us
How to grieve the futures
That never even had a chance
To start
Nobody warned us
How heavy a quiet room can feel
How loud our own name sounds
In someone else’s mouth
But listen
You’re still here
Heart improvising
On a beat it never heard before
So today
Maybe we praise the ordinary
The way the light lands on the sink
The way your chest rises
One more time
Life isn’t what we figure out
Then follow
It’s this
You listening
Me trying to say it
Before it slips away again
©2026 Jon Kinyon
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review