The Shadows

by Alex North

It’s going to be okay. Yes, I think about that a lot. How every good parent says it, and how often they’re wrong.

Absence of evidence was not evidence of absence. The fact that I hadn’t found anything didn’t mean there was nothing to find, only that I would never be sure.

But everything is okay until it isn’t. People are there, large as life and taken for granted, and then they aren’t.

You know you need to let each other go, but it’s so sad and difficult, and so you don’t until you have to. Until the hurt of keeping someone outweighs the hurt of losing them.