You slide up next to me and place your little hand on mine.
No words.
No words from you or words from me.
You aren’t ready and I don’t need you to be.
My sleep is marked with your big curious eyes. Asking questions without speaking. A thousand lives lived and every time we find each other on our way.
Discussions in the silence.
Understanding in the air.
We jump and dance in slow motion, your laughter echoing against my ears. You’ll find us again, I’m sure of it. You always have, and I know deeply that you always will.
Your truck arrives today and I can’t sleep through the night. What can be done with a hollow reminder of the way things used to be?
A massive relic to reiterate the empty space between the then and the now.
Your essence still lingering in the air, the unsettling starkness of a seat where you used to sit.
A tiny universe where the memories still float in the ether, hitting the walls and fragmenting into the space around us.
A life forever divided between the befores and the afters.
I wake in the night with an anvil on my chest. Wanting to protect your mama from the evidence of this reality.
Please don’t bring it here and make it real and force us to look so directly at this pain. It isn’t fair. We don’t want it.
My bones. They rattle in my skin. My eyes ache. I try to find peace with a universe indiscriminate in what she takes. No fairness in the pain, no explanation in the randomness. No sense.
No patterns.
No answers. No resolutions.
We don’t get to understand it, no matter how much we search.
You are a piece of us and we carry you in our hearts. Woven in the fabric of our beings, paramount in the stories we tell. You are ours and you always will be. We stare at the road ahead, unable to comprehend how life can really go on without you. A thousand times we’ll say again– It wasn’t meant to be this way. A life in pursuit of wildness and adventure. A body in need of speed. A constant search to quiet the mind, still the soul, be present in your being.
The risk was there as an ever present edge just beyond the distance, but you couldn’t see clearly the possibilities before you. They were there of course, but you wouldn’t believe it. How could you ever really, when now they’re here– and we still can’t.
You aren’t where you want to be, I can feel it to my core. Surrounded by love and wrapped up in the light, confused by your sudden arrival amongst the stars. When I close my eyes my brother is there to receive you. Hold you through the pain. Wrap his arms around you and help you on your way. He doesn’t want to be there either, but I know your presence gives him purpose, and so I thank you for that. Just a few months ago you were both still here. Still breathing. Still earthside. Still alive with chances and hopes and possibilities of tomorrow. I know you’re out there in the waves. Salt against your skin, wind against your face. You rise with the moon and settle with the dust of the earth. You are ours as much as you are your own. And we carry you in our hearts. A deep, enduring, painful and present love. For every day to come, we carry you.
