Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back

by Alicia Cook

It’s the nature of my beast; I care the most or I care the least, never ever in between.

So the story always goes, I’m your soulmate or your foe, writer’s blocked or on a roll.

Someone you saw in the park was holding hands with a child who was just introduced to death at an age when they can’t grasp the concept of “gone for good.” So, they secretly figured they’d ask Santa for them back come Christmas.

This made me sob, thanks for that

Odds are, you nudged shoulders on a busy street with a broken human today, and you didn’t even know it. Practice empathy. Practice kindness. Always.

There’s stability in the aftermath of instability. There’s beauty in hard transitions.

I am drained from breathing here, in a world with last words and final hugs, where we have to worry about clocks running out and saying goodbye to people we know we can’t live without but will have to one day. It is hard to live in this world of inevitabilities.

I don’t think socks have to match and that it’s silly that so many spend so much of their limited time on earth folding them together, or searching for their matches, like socks could have a sole mate. I appreciate puns.

Preach!

I loved you too much. Being strangers isn’t enough distance for me. I can’t unmeet you. Let’s call this what this is—you’re more of a ghost than a stranger. I loved you too much.

Be like water. Fill every space like it was made just for you, like you belong there. Yes, there’s a risk you’ll pour over and soak whatever is near, but water doesn’t worry about what it wets; it just flows or falls. Water doesn’t apologize, and most days it just dries, melts, or freezes like it was never there. But sometimes it leaves a mark behind—it all depends on what it touches. Don’t be afraid to leave behind a mark. Be like water.