The Map That Leads to You

by J.P. Monninger

The thing is, I like you. I liked you right off. If I had tail feathers, I would spread them out and dance around you to demonstrate my interest.

“You were better before you opened your mouth. Much better, actually.”

You said life happens here and now, and it’s a fool’s bargain to let something good go now in the hope of something better at a later date.

“Not always, Heather. Nothing is always. Nothing in the universe is always.

Sometimes it’s easier to ruin a thing than to guard it.

Great love inevitably carries with it great loss.

I learned that love is not static; love does not divide. What love we find in this world is coming toward us and traveling away from us simultaneously. To say we find love is a misuse of the word find. Love finds us, passes through us, continues. We cannot find it any more than we can find air or water; we cannot live without either thing any more than we can live without love. Love is essential and as common as bread. If you look for it, you will see it everywhere, and you will never be without it.

He had given me hope and taught me to trust that life held surprises if you allowed it to reveal itself. You did not clutter it with camera shots and Facebook postings. You gave yourself to the situation. That was Jack’s great lesson.

He told me that the people in Batak believed the souls of the dead could live in trees, and if that were true, he promised to live in the Esche, where I could find him when I needed him. He said he would be in Paris always, our Paris.