Every Precious and Fragile Thing

by Barbara Davis

I would give anything to erase that day from these pages, to take back my silence and stand up for you, as I should have done.

But would I, if given the chance to do it over?

What I do know is that even after all the heartache, all the broken promises and shattered commandments, I wouldn’t trade a moment of the joy I knew with you.

back to the beginning of our ending.

My pen is my way of keeping you close, an inky tether across the ether, to wherever you are.

But it occurs suddenly that I’m being selfish in writing to you this way, holding you here where you’d rather not be.

Perhaps you wish to be free of me.

Who you were—and who I wasn’t.

it was that it didn’t matter how many years or miles you put between yourself and a thing. The memories were always there. Because you never really left them behind. They traveled with you, like shadows, determined to be noticed, to be dealt with.