Here We Go Again

by Alison Cochrun

“Life is the prickly pear. It’s always going to be a combination of beauty and hurt, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself from the hard parts. There is no way to avoid pain.” Logan stares at the pink blossoms flourishing in the heat. “I don’t understand that metaphor at all,” she lies. “Hmmm…” Joe grumbles. “Well, I can’t help but notice you started calling her Rosemary.” “She’s been doing that accidentally!” Hale pops up beside them without warning, like a sunburned Jack-in-the-box. She’s smiling, and she turns to look at the nearby plants. “Oputina polyacantha,” she says without even reading the little plaque beneath the cactus. “I love prickly pears.”

“You girls want some Tuesdays with Morrie advice?” Joe says when they’re all back in the car. “Here it is. Take more nudes while you’re young.”

At the end of her life, she wants tangible proof that she was once brave enough to bare everything to someone else.

“Your brain is an asset. Not a liability.”

“Your big feelings are one of the most beautiful things about you.”

She laughs. “Yeah, and look where that’s got me. When you die, it’s going to fucking destroy me.” Joe uses what little strength he has to push her feet off the bed. “Good. It should destroy you. If nothing can destroy you, Logan, then what’s the point?”

This is love. Love is seeing perfection in every flaw. Seeing every flaw as a miracle because it belongs to the person you care about most. Love is saying, yes, still. Even after all these years.

“I lived my life trying to avoid hurt and pain, and I ended up with pancreatic cancer at sixty. You could both guard your hearts for another thirty years, and you will still experience all the same hardship. We’re never truly safe. That’s life.”