Sunday, April 24, 2022

Bellmawr, NJ

I found the year's first four-leaf clover today, catching up over quarantine phone lines and trying to let the blue skies heal me: eventually it appeared, like they do, if you look close enough, like they do if you look long enough, because there is always magic to be found in the details. He says your friends are a blessing, and my skin tingles. The dandelions in the grass look like bursts of sunshine.

In the car down, she says I prayed for him every day, why was it not enough? and I don't know what to tell her. I want to tell her that God doesn't meddle in the affairs of mortals, I want to tell her that death eats its way into one's soul like a fire, that it burns everything and leaves nothing but its one singular solution that it takes a flood to extinguish. 

I want to tell her how you opened a window hoping you could fly, and on that day the earth shifted on its axis. It's been 18 years and I haven't been the same since. Back on the phone, I make him promise never to leave me this way. I've been making everyone promise it since you did. I don't believe in prayer so I have to rely on contractual obligation. 

When we were teenagers, we used the word dandelion as something sublimely happy, we used it as a feeling, as a bright light inside of us. Are you feeling dandelion today, we would ask each other in the intricately folded notes we passed between classes, a carefully choreographed dance in five minutes and that is how I learned what it is to love.

So do not chastize me for spending spring looking for flowers. 

Every flower I see helps me close a window. And closing windows, is how I tell you
I love you.

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