Before We Were Strangers

by Renee Carlino

You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another.

That’s why my mother always said we memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.

‘Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.’ ”

The present is our own. The right-this-second, the here-and-now, this moment before the next, is ours for the taking. It’s the only free gift the universe has to offer. The past doesn’t belong to us anymore, and the future is just a fantasy, never guaranteed. But the present is ours to own. The only way we can realize that fantasy is if we embrace the now.

We both cried together, surrendering to the reality that we had to accept. No one could change the past or give us back the time we had lost, and there were no words to make everything better. We just had to accept the present for what it was.