I guess this was the last picture taken of us, right before that horrid reading at the marine museum in which that uptight crowd didn't hear you at all, the fine woven intricacies of your uncommonly far-reaching comprehension, the seeringly brave honesty of your life and death wrestling: stranger within self, within self, within stranger.
I don't remember the time of year. august maybe.
Not February. Not our time.
It's been so long since we've celebrated this sweep of our days together.
anyway. what I would do to ring that dinner bell, to set the table for you and call for your beautiful girls who might come running from Emma's or from the costume room with petalled skirts or suits of armor on. And you might be stirring something, tasting something, saying something hilarious. And I would have been myself, the way I most liked to be, that self that came into being only when you were near me. I was always stunned to find 'there I am'. Only you could do it, just by being there, and I felt that minor miracle every time we were together..I haven't felt that way since maybe our moment on the bench at Caron. I hardly even know what I mean by it now, but I remember it, and would surely suddenly be me again in a second if only you could return too.
(you were so good to me)
I miss your love and support, your exhaustive depth and gifts, your unparalleled domestic grace and easy aptitudes for using life to decorate life to make more life for all those you loved, all those who made you laugh so easily. I think of the last gesture- a perfect signature, left behind you. Sticks for marshmellow roastings, one set in each of our places, by the firepit, by the pool.
The universes that have been lost.
(literally too, as you were the one who could find tightly curled galaxies in the night sky, who would shake me awake in the deep hours to come and stand on the wet grass and see a little tiny impossible compression of truth tucked into a corner of space).
We could hear the ocean best in the middle of the night.
I remember what Greg said at the funeral, that perhaps you have gone ahead to prepare things for us, to make them perfect when we arrived. If you could be, you are.
I think too of what Peter said, that life without you is like living in a world without trees. maybe others can't see that, but that is how it feels.
I miss you unbearably, my dearest, best and lifelong Snap.
Happy Birthday to your precious soul.
We are doing our best to carry on.
I'll love you forever,
Little
