For Lucy

by Jewel E. Ann

“No matter how undeserving one might feel of forgiveness, no one is unworthy of it.” —Emmett Riley

When you’re married with a family of your own, I will still look at those stairs…” I nod out her doorway toward the stairs “…and remember the first time you understood the idea of Santa Claus and flew down them to see if he’d brought you gifts and taken the cookies and milk you left out for him. I will welcome every new day and love all the new memories we make, but I don’t want to forget how we got here. Even if parts of the journey have been really painful.”

She is my taste. I don’t have a favorite color. I have a favorite person who loves purple and velvet. And I’m not a bachelor.

There’s no way I could love another woman the way I love her. My love for her is not contingent on her love for me. It’s not even contingent on us being married.

I’ve always loved her with open arms. My love has never been forced. It’s always been free. She’s the one who cannot walk away. And she knows she needs me to take the blame for that too. So I do. Because that’s how I love her.

We didn’t just fall in love, we collided until our souls tangled, until we knew any attempt to

This hurts. It doesn’t hurt less than it did five years ago. Not for me. Not for her. I don’t think it will ever hurt less; we’ll just learn to navigate the pain better.

I imagine he’s really here and I just can’t see him because he’s hiding behind the curtains, in a closet, or under his bed.

Without him, it’s a world without music. A life without color. An eternity of numbness. Tatum

Lucy. This is for Lucy. For her … I pull my shit together,

need to know you care because the alternative is that I’m an unforgiving bitch who leaves her husband because she doesn’t know how to deal with the loss of a child.”

lift my head and stand, quickly turning away from her so she doesn’t see how her touch cut me back open, making all my old wounds bleed again. “Yeah,

The world would continue to turn, but it would always feel not quite right. Like amputating a part of your body. You can live, but not the same way.

She’s the air filling my suffocating lungs. I love this woman with every cell in my body.

I’m the thief who will have to give them back. I will have to admit they no longer belong to me.

Losing a child feels like you’re dying every single second of every single day, but you don’t actually die. You live. And that’s so much worse.

I love my wife. That will never change.

“Marry a guy who cares about you. Screw the details. They don’t matter.”