Panenka

by Ronan Hession

To him love was no union between two otherwise incomplete halves, but more like the gravity that locked two bodies into the same orbit, each doing their own thing but by reference to and in concert with the other.

Habituated loneliness was bearable, but the heart was not built to endure glimpses of what it could never truly have.

Relationships never truly ended, and even when people faded from you their effect was preserved somewhere in the particle physics of experience where everything is a compound made up of traces of everything else.

The idea of a victory at your expense is alien to me. Your loss is my

trying not to repeat someone else’s history is a wasteful way to live.’

you can’t decide not to love someone.’

But isn’t that what allowing yourself be loved is all about – letting something greater than fear into your life?’