And Yet
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”
It was.















