I’m doing a puzzle that is mostly yellow on a floor that is mainly carpeted in a room that is far too dark for this sort of thing.
But there needs to be something. Something needs to be happening because the alternative is not an option.
I was distracted for hours after the call, I was lost in a numb place where I didn’t know what to do with myself because there is nothing that seems like enough to counterbalance what’s going on for you.

The wind has been howling for hours, rattling the outer pane of the windows in such a way that makes me think any second now it’s going to shake loose and clear splinters will get swept up to find their way into places they don’t belong, much the way it moved through you, unseen, cutting, a devastation of unexpected misfortune.
I’m listening now, ear pressed to my own heartbeat, looking for cracks, for symptoms that will indicate how much it’s going to hurt but it’s still too big to grasp, like trying to hold spaghetti, the feelings slip through my fingers.
I’m listening hard, thinking the wind must have tried to warn me, shrieking against the thin layer that separates me from something fierce enough to wipe it all away without once making a sound.

There is no point in looking back and speculating when it all began, wondering if I’d been quieter, paid better attention, if I’d been in the right place at the right time, if we could have…
But that is a futile endeavor.

I don’t know what to do with this. How to feel about it. The words don’t climb inside deep enough to get to the places I need to scrape at, to pull out those broken shards and try to refit them into some shape that lets me see clearly, without the distortion of anything missing.

I’m sitting here with these fragments, trying to put it all together, fill in the space with reason, with sense, with logic, with time.

How important it suddenly feels to listen, to sit quiet and open wide to take it all in. To measure each moment, each breath as a blessed event, and take joy in all we know of each other.