Pack Up the Moon

by Kristan Higgins

even when we still had hundreds of miles to go. You could feel it. You could tell you were getting close. That’s where I am these days.

In love wasn’t a phrase. It was how they lived, wrapped in the warm, soft blanket of mutual adoration,

“I don’t want to waste time feeling bad about what I don’t have when what I do have is all this.

“Whatever you choose, do with all your heart, and leave your mark,” he said, covering her hand with his. “If you’re going to be a bartender, be the bartender everyone loves to talk to, who invents the best drinks and makes you feel right at home. If you’re going to be a hairdresser, make every customer feel good about themselves.” “If I’m going to be a fashion designer, make clothes that make people feel happy and confident,” she said.

Asperger’s, or autism spectrum disorder, or neurodiversity, or whatever we’re calling it these days. Those terms change so fast.

Once you’d had a love like that, it would be futile to try to replicate it. Everything else would be a hollow imitation.

But those were a few hours. Three or five hours in a week that lasted one hundred and sixty-eight.

it was a common experience; every experience clashing with a recollection of loss.

comparison was the thief of joy, as Teddy Roosevelt had once said