The Things We Are Always Saying
Maybe you lost a beloved friend to this pandemic. Maybe you lost three. Maybe your best friend got a lung transplant at age sixteen, or you heard that terrible word: inoperable.
Maybe you are staring down the long double barrel of autumn and winter and wondering who we will be on the other side, and who will be there with us.
Some days I think of everyone I've ever loved. I am thinking of the unspoken or unsaid things and they rise and fall in me like waves.
The sound it makes is: thank you . . . thank you . . . thank you.
For things taught and kindnesses shown. For recognition and togetherness and making the world a more hospitable place for our strange and wondrous selves. For acceptance and this feeling of carrying in our hearts and being carried by others.
I do not know what to tell you. Maybe that tears come quickly for us in these days. Our voices break in the middle of so many sentences.
I want to say there is something about violins that gives this feeling voice. There is something about the blanket of night that makes it easier to say.
I imagine us always saying thank you, or I love you, as if every other sentence were these in code. To the liquor store owner passing wine bottles through bulletproof glass. The super who reminds me of my dad calling me by name as I walk by. The courier arriving with the medicine at 10 pm at night. The bus driver delivering me home safely and the old man waving through the barbershop window.
Our heart of hearts, our home base, or the safe harbor we dropped anchor into.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.