Take What You Can Carry

by Gian Sardar

Boredom, she was told—and now believes—is a privilege. If

That bottomless, enduring kind of love, the kind in which you see the depths of all someone wishes to keep hidden and yet still you love, relentlessly.

This is a hazard she’s familiar with: when you love, you see what you love, not necessarily what’s there. The artful blur of affection.

Is it possible to truly know someone if you cannot comprehend that which made them who they are? Can one truly love another without that understanding?

Don’t confuse your anger, her father used to tell her. Sometimes we get mad just because we’re forced to feel.

You love someone because of who they are but also—and maybe more important—despite who they are. Then

because I love you should not be said to someone as a means to keep them going or as reward for how far they’ve come,

The reason they were spared. Saved. Which is it? she wonders. Saved or spared? One involves action, the other a passive assistance. A choice to look the other way. What the man did was spare them. What Delan did that day, she realizes, was save them.

She’d found her voice at the one moment that demanded silence.