N ☪️

Bring the salt to boil. Unmoor the past from its bearings. Lift up your one chance like the shadow that has lived with you all these years, quiet pain on the subway in your own small world. Remember the nights spent passing notes to birds in the hopes they would take up a new language to obliterate this one of loss.

Not everything that comes back, comes back the same. There are a dozen ways to lose someone and not every one of them involves leaving. Know, again, the woman you were then, her easy belief in everything that seemed good. Back then, you were only concerned with the men inside you, not what was already inside yourself.

Open the windows, unpreserve the jam from the cellars. Had you given your love seed, it could have grown empires; this one is yours to build now. As a child, you wrote letters to all the Greek gods, hoping to take on some of their strength; you have more than you could ever imagine.

There are ways to absolve pain of its purpose, not all of them good. There is no preparing for something you’ve been preparing for for years but never expected. 

Let out that last breath you held when they first left. Ready the first course - nectarines dripping with juice, lamb steeped in honey, dough crisp with butter. The house is waiting; the moon is watching.

When he arrives, do not answer the door. Wait for the knocking to subside like a slow drum. Light your candles, and sit down to feast.