Wake

The newscasters speak of the cold, how the schools and roads and lives have shut down, how it is impenetrable. But I step out in the sunshine and it feels like a mild spring day. The snow thaws in puddles. My lungs breathe deep and let the illness dissolve into the Houston Street fumes.

We moved the rocker to the kitchen, while the Christmas tree lights up the living room. I rock in it awkwardly as she tells me of his fall. You can see the bridge from her kitchen windows.

There's the most beautiful sunsets in that view.

I just wish the last time I saw him hadn't had such a terrible end, she says. It reminds me suddenly how I close every conversation with my parents by saying I love you. An old remnant from younger years where I feared every meeting may be our last. No matter what, I always wanted my final words to them to be that I loved them. It seems an insignificant consolation, after the fact.

I cried into the rocker, clutching my phone and her words in it. They will say there is a lesson in this. To pay closer attention, to love more.

But it is only sad, now.