Frailty

Phones, always these voices, always this change they bring. I called the apartment on Morton Street and could barely grasp that she was there, amidst puppies and Halloween decorations, and I was standing freezing outside a grocery store. Aren't you at least coming to visit soon? she said, and the dagger turned slowly in my heart.

Later, it rings again. A love so nearly lost, the struggling body packing up belongings and making arrangements for a world without. Here is the money that I owe you. It's not all, but it's all there is. Clothes ready to throw away. The end so near. Don't ever read the letters, burn them, pretend it was never this close. The phone rings, the waiting room, the scared heart hoping for a lifeline.

If you ever feel so bad that you are done, don't be. You write those letters because there are words left to say. People left to love. They love you too. You are not making this place any better by leaving it.

You don't know it yet, but things will get better. You don't know it yet, but it will not be cold, forever.