Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

So clearly there’s something in having to fend for yourself. Like me, I think. And in some strange way this gives me hope.

Life is an accumulation of aches. They fill you up and take your breath away and you think you’ll never breathe again, but before you know it, you are just words on paper, gone quiet and asleep until someone finds those words and reads them.

“More than words,” she says, which is shorthand for I love you more than words.

Blackwood motto chiseled into the mantel: VIVIS SPERANDUM. WHERE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE.

THIS IS A BRIEF LIFE, BUT IN ITS BREVITY IT OFFERS US SOME SPLENDID MOMENTS, SOME MEANINGFUL ADVENTURES.

TO LIVE IS THE RAREST THING IN THE WORLD. MOST PEOPLE EXIST, THAT IS ALL.