How to accept an embrace without wondering if it will lead

to hurt.

How to tell stories like we once did, without fearing the variables and empty blanks.

How to say things like ‘this is normal, no?’ without wondering what normal is.

How to meet and hold and share without it feeling like

something to be done surreptitiously, under the cover

of excuses and apologies.

How to break bread together again, and how to exist without the sterile comfort of screens between us.

So much joy will be punctuated by so much loss, and we will somehow find it in ourselves to miss the strangeness of what we lived with.

We will speak with our bodies because language will struggle to

explain the suddenness with which the world upended

and righted itself again.

We will try not to look back, yes, but we will find ourselves drawn to everything we lost in the softness of plenty again.

It will take time to learn the carelessness we cultivated into an art, but we will somehow,

soon,

learn again.