until the sadness ends

Does it matter that I once threw pebbles over this bridge to see how fast they’d fall? I imagined my body the size of a hundred small stones moving in unison. How I longed for the rocks’ silence once they reached the ground. But I could never lift both of my feet from the earth at once. Today I press my cheek to the bridge-facing window, feel the sun’s heat gathering at the border of the pane. Today I watch the cut red tulips open towards the waning light. I have so much more to tell you about being alive.

“Time holds us both fixed fast Under the bright wasting stars.”

“But I do feel strange-almost unearthly. I’ll never get used to being alive. It’s a mystery. Always startled to find I’ve survived.”

“To taste the salt of the stars in the sea.”

“I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”