Tin Man

by Sarah Winman

Make me look interesting. Make me look like a poet.

Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things. Never forget that,

I was thinking about color and light, said Michael. And I was thinking maybe that’s all we are, Dora. Color and light.

They sat there quietly, not talking about death, or the kiss, or how life was going to change. They watched the shifting colors of the sun and the deep shadows eavesdropped on their grief, and the vivid descant of birdsong slowly muted to unimaginable silence.

And Ellis remembered thinking he would never meet anyone like him again, and in that acknowledgment, he knew, was love. He could see his mother concentrating on Michael’s words, how enraptured she was. And when he stopped, she bent down and kissed him on the head and said, Thank you. Because everything she held on to and everything she believed in came together in that unexpected moment. The simple belief that men and boys were capable of beautiful things.

I said to him that just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.

I’d never felt more myself. Or more in tune to what I was and what I was capable of. A moment of authenticity when fate and blueprint collide and everything is not only possible, but within arm’s reach. And I fell in love. Madly, intoxicatingly so. I think he may have, too. Just for a moment. But I never really knew.

sometimes I feel as if my veins are leaking, as if my body is overwhelmed, as if I’m drowning from the inside.

I look at these young men, not in envy but in wonder. It is for them now, the beauty of discovery, that endless moonscape of life unfolding.

He walks out to the middle of the golden field and faces the sun, and he thinks, We did have time. We had so much more than many do. And he feels all right. And he knows he’ll be all right. And that is enough.