Every Precious and Fragile Thing

by Barbara Davis

The thought of leaving behind what’s most precious to us is unbearable, and so we cling to our memories in whatever way we can.

but wise enough to know we didn’t fit in and needed to be careful. You learn it early when you’re different. How to cloak yourself in sameness, how to hide in plain sight.

Perhaps the whispers I sometimes hear on the wind, the fleeting whiff of scent I catch when I enter a room, are only wishful thinking, like the pain of a phantom limb.

But the first step in healing after any tragedy is to look our pain in the eye and accept the fact that it’s a part of who we’ll be going forward.

I love the language, strange new words that feel like confections on the tongue.

We get so stuck in that we can’t see what else might be out there for us.

But none of us know how much time we have left. The important thing is to use what we do have wisely—and meaningfully.”

We realize at long last that life in this world is finite, and with our wicks beginning to burn low, we cast about for other sources of light.

Don’t live with the ones you don’t have to. Mend your fences while you can—as soon as you can. If someone needs you, be there, whatever it costs. Because you might not get another chance.”

Be with me always, I plead, silently echoing Heathcliff’s anguish as I close the door behind me. Take any form—drive me mad!—only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

she’d finally come to understand why each soul was sent out into the world. It was to love—and to leave the mark of that love on the world when the time came to leave it. This, at long last, she had done.