What's Real

poetic prose

Photo by Vlada Karpovich

She isn’t real.

I know that.

But she was real once.

I’m not so far out there you can’t appreciate what I’m saying.

You’ve lost people. You’ve let them go, once and for all, only to discover that letting go is impossible. That those people are going to come back, in whatever way they decide you need them to. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Maybe they come back in your children. In the way they rebel or strive to be perfect. The way they pronounce a certain word or laugh at your jokes.

Maybe they come back in nature. In the roar of the ocean or the quiet of a first snowfall. The charge in the air before a thunderstorm. Or a hornet sting.

They come back in the taste of your food, when it’s done just right, and in the songs you put on to remember them. And the ones you put on to help you forget.

She comes back in the afternoon, mid-summer, Friday. Always Friday.

Friday afternoons are my low point. The point in my week when I can’t give any more. To my job, to my f…