You slipped your note in between lines and letters, between virtual laughs and silly jollifications. Double meanings kept washing up on the shore of our words — faded memories we wish would wash away with the tide.
I picked up the shards you scattered across the sand, tried to meld them back together, and forgot that I could cut my fingers on broken glass.
But still with bloodied fingers, I would hold each piece up to the light, hoping, hoping you might look up and see it too.
That the world is more than what we leave in the dirt.
That you are more than fragments of broken dreams and would-have-beens.
We carry our demons upon our backs. Somewhere in the darkness and the waves we clasped hands so tight even as we waited to let go.
“I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien
I learned then that I could not carry your sorrows for you. And I learned to fear that the shadow would one day engulf you, and could only beg you silently,
Please, please don’t disappear.
I am carried by others stronger than me; I am so tired, so tired, so tired, but as we become unwitting beneficiaries of those stronger than us, I hope, and hope, and hope, that their strength will be enough to carry the both of us through.
