The Collected Regrets of Clover

by Mikki Brammer

New York is a city of lonely people full of regrets.

The sparse occupants of his kitchen cabinets—one cup, one bowl, one plate—that were testaments to a life of loneliness.

But even I knew there was a perilous line between watching something vicariously and watching it to replace real-life emotions.

loving someone inevitably also meant one day losing them—if not by rejection or betrayal, then most certainly by death.

It frustrated me that society was so determined to quantify grief, as if time could erase the potency of love. Or, on the other hand, how it dictated that grief for someone you knew fleetingly should be equally as fleeting. But while a mother who miscarries might not have ever had the chance to hold that child, they had plenty of time to love them, to dream and hope for them. And that means their grief is twofold—they’re not just grieving the child, but the life they never got to experience. Who are we to tell anyone their pain isn’t worthy?

That was the day that I began to realize how hard it is to be anything but what the world already thinks you are.

“And I pray it happens to you too—but the lesson I hope you’ll learn, that I didn’t, is not to let go of the person who offers that to you just because you don’t want to take a risk.”