[OC] When Nothing Else Has Worked

"When nothing else has worked", you wrote,
and left those words beside the road.
White paint on rust, beneath the sun—
as if you’d tried out everyone.

But everyone? You haven’t yet.
There are hands you haven’t gotten to meet I'll bet,
voices that haven’t said your name,
doors you don’t know that lead to someplace changed.

There’s someone still a stranger now
who’ll make you laugh—you don’t know how.
Some ordinary, unplanned day
may put that one missing piece in play.

And maybe nothing works alone.
Maybe it’s things you haven’t known
to put together, two or three—
a different place, with new company,

a song, a job, a midnight drive,
a person glad that you’re alive,
some tiny shift, some stubborn chance,
some strange set of circumstance.

You cannot test what hasn’t come.
You cannot count what’s not begun.
You cannot know, from where you stand,
every road or every hand.

So if you meant those words you drew,
here’s one more thought I leave for you:
When nothing else has worked so far,
“so far” is not the end of who you are.

This rusted steel will meet more rain.
The sun will bleach these words away.
And you may meet, before they fade,
the people you were meant to meet someday.

So stay to see what finds you here.
Stay for the unimagined year.
Stay long enough to prove this true:

There’s always something you haven’t tried—
because the world has not yet finished meeting you.