At the dinner table on Sunday, I let go.
The water that flooded the front of the house loosened my grip, but it was the constant drone of the driers afterwards that finally got my hand to open.
Sitting across from you, I felt free to ask not “What happens next?” but to say: “I wonder what will happen next” knowing the difference in the words would change the way I saw the answer.
The horizon was opening for me again and I felt lighter than I had since the water came down and shifted the banks of our life.
For you the distress was still a snake within, wrapping itself around your lungs and throat and heart.
I looked into your brimming eye and wanted to say come here.
You were blind and deaf though, so I waited and hoped you’d see how it could be.
So I was afraid to point at the moon and say Look, it’s beautiful because I did not want to be told it was just a barren rock.
in your mind you were disappearing beneath the surface, overcome by tasks of contractor estimates and men who will crawl under the house to emerge with bad news and phone calls to unsympathetic utility district people — along with kids who need to go here and there and are unrelenting in their asks while your husband drives in the dark to an uncertain job in the South.
But my mind does not see what you see. My mind sees you. And while I know your hands are still clenched around yesterday’s idea of tomorrow, I say: Come over here. I promise you there is joy here, even if the circumstances are the same.
