XXXV

I dread the mornings because they're where your absence finds me. Like a dark bird, like a damaged nerve, the mornings are when I feel that you are not there. And I can over come, and I can soldier on, and I can get up and start my routine and busy myself and wait for your return - which is glorious, by the way, and sweet as strawberries, and delightful as anything else in the world - but the mornings will always come. And the absence. And the longing. And the aching effort of quashing my resent and distracting my mind and soothing my heart with other pretty and wonderful things. Always, the morning comes. Always the absence.

But then, in the same vein, always the coming home. Without the one there is no other. This is the perspective I try so hard to hold.