To protect or to harm?

Today's excerpt includes a poem I wrote eight years ago today.  I wrote it for a student on her 12th birthday.  My protagonist finds this poem as she is organizing her poetry to publish:

Cusp 

A scorpion’s arched tail, or
An archer’s bow.

To protect or to harm
Lies in a decision
That cannot be made lightly.

One foot in either world
The past or the future
Looking forward, or Looking back?
The choice is ours to make.

Look up.
Look to the stars
They have watched humanity for millennium,
They will not forsake us now.

She stared in disbelief at these words, this poem written by her fifty-two year old self.  She had written them for a student, but now, clearly, these words of hers were a sign from her angel.

To protect or to harm. A decision that cannot be made lightly.  The choice is ours to make. They will not forsake us now. 

She closed the book, marking the page with the bookmark that had come with the journal. 

Her angel was talking to her, trying to get her attention, making her listen. 

There is still time, there is always time. 

 Isn’t that what her daughter had once said? 

“We have time.”

She walked into the kitchen, and poured the cold coffee down the drain.  Reheating it for a second time seemed silly.

She stood in front of the post-it note on the fridge and pulled the earth magnet to free the crumpled, yellow piece of paper.  It fluttered to the ground and slipped under the fridge.  

She left it there.