We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

There’s definitely a now or never feeling about food around here, and it makes you wonder what you think you might be waiting for in your own life.

If there’s a metaphor for our friendship, it might be this. The blind faith. The absolute dependability. The love like a compass, its north always true.

we listen into the silence for Edi to inhale. But she doesn’t. She’s leaving behind the shell of her human flesh, molting like an invisible butterfly, disappearing. She’s going, she’s gone. You could almost grab onto her wings and go too.

“But also,” I’m saying to him, “she just really loved doing it. Feeding you. And maybe you carry her with you now not only in your memories, but in the actual cells of your body.” I try to steady my breathing. “All that love,” I say. “It’s in your very blood and bones. It’s what you’re made out of. So she’s still here with you, Dash, with all of us. Even though we are going to miss her so, so much.”

Is it better to have loved and lost? Ask anyone in pain and they’ll tell you no. And yet. Here we are, hurling ourselves headlong into love like lemmings off a cliff into a churning sea of grief. We risk every last thing for our heart’s expansion, even when that expanded heart threatens to suffocate us and then burst.

Fly, be free! I want to say. I want to say, Stay with me forever! Come to think of it, these are the two things I want to say to everyone I love most.