A Little Hope

by Ethan Joella

How grief comes in shyly, like a new season. How grief is something else before it is grief.

Freddie thinks about Alex and Kay, about the thousand journeys you make when you’ve been married many years. All the stuff you survive. All the wounds that heal over.

You never know what can break you. What you can fix, what you can stand up to. You never know what time will do, what will defeat or surprise you. You never know.

We feel what we feel, and we shouldn’t apologize for ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing.”

Living is fixing, living is working on everything that’s wrong—or at least trying your hardest to.

“But I’ll find my queen. I’m not even playing around with princesses anymore. Going right for a queen.”