Dear Friend,
I hope the winds that brought you here were gentle. I hope you find solace in our brief moment together. I wish I could take you by the hand and show you the Christmas Tree Farm from my childhood, my father's slick sweat dripping after another day pruning. I wish you could see the sky in Philly, its lilac tune a homage to us, the bustle standing tall in our ears. I want you beside me in all the kitchens where my mother poured wine, in each bedroom I shared with a lover, in every funeral home from which parts of me have never left. I am returning, again and again, to the feet of Loss, to the enduring root of grief. I am cultivating a language for it, gardening the dead to flower, filling a void with sound and memory. Look. The ghosts. The wolves. The places I've called home running together like paint. Here the Alabama heat. Here the Missouri yellow. Here the Pennsylvania autumn. I am a product of the contradicting geographies that raised me, of the small pockets of people who stood firm in the rain. What can I offer you but a glimpse, but one version of the story? How can we suspend time, to fold each day into another, something we can observe all at once? I cannot take your hand. We cannot be shoulder to shoulder. I do not have any answers. Just a history. Just a heart too open for its own good. I'm still learning how to find forgiveness in the dark, to sit in the soft flutter of love, to live in a present still heavy from its past. Good friend, new friend, be delicate, be kind. I am grateful always for your presence, for your purpose. I've been waiting, all this time, to see you.
With warmth and love,
NS