I know awesome has been overused for years.
It’s become a conversational crutch—
a word we toss in to underline a point,
when really, the point should stand on its own.
It has drifted far from its meaning,
like a balloon carried away from the party,
losing air as it goes.
I’ve known awesome.
I’ve stood in the pure majesty of Antarctica,
floated through the wilds of Bathurst Harbour,
leaned over the cliff edge at Kanangra Walls
with the world falling away beneath my feet.
In those moments, awesome was not a word I could say.
It was the silence that pressed against my chest,
the stillness that asked me to submit
to something so much bigger than myself.
But in everyday use,
awesome has been stripped of that weight.
It’s just more noise,
a puff of air to inflate my reaction
as if my opinion needs a boost.
When everything is “awesome,”
nothing really is.
The Afterword 
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