43 / 48

Today you would be 43. I am 48.

That five year spread where things were uncommon.
Differences there- different histories.
Separate experience.
Our everythings were close, but bent a bit.
Fodder for a talk on an achey drive in bad weather
or the excuse to say you'll never understand.
The ends of threads unraveled,
we wet the frays between our lips to make a point.
The exciting stuff!

That five year spread: now you're gone three years.
One calendar stopped.
Mine chimes as the distance grows.
My life as pinned to a cork board,
layers of recollections thick on a pushpin shaft.
I carry new stories I want to tell you:
We did that. Now I do it like this, over here.
Here's exciting and beautiful.
This is lovely and horrible things.
On this side- predicated heartaches. Unexpected levity.
Back here is bracing resolve.
And bravery. And sweetness. And gratitude.

I am in the grasses at Wind Cave
blowing dandelion thistles, losing sight of the seeds in the sun.
Some nestle onto the shallow sea of dewey greens.
Some snag on their way down. Or, up.
Lots are lost along the winds.
Indirect. Serpentine.
Paths for my future, borne on my past and present with you.
And, my present with you.

I go...and you're here.
The hummingbird that interrupts
when my heart is beating a crow.