CJS.

One learns a lot in love and loss

In observing cowardice and embracing courage

In learning to move through

Looking into the rearview mirror you see and feel and hear and love and fear

Every single moment

A degree’s shift in temperature, a stranger wearing familiar aftershave as they walk past

Days on the calendar, sunlight at a very specific angle,

Taste

The taste of everything

Reality is cold and unbelievable

Bad faith and disrespect an open wound

Salted by ‘why?” and “how?” and “so soon?”

And every day a memory or two melts into the foreground

How do you compromise with a brain and heart that both want to hate and to love

Settle the dispute between the two

When you bring it up sometimes they’ll say –

“it was a long time”