Most of All You

I’m good at running, I guess.”

I inclined my head, trying to catch her eye, to make her smile. “I don’t mind chasing you, Ellie. Just let me catch you once in a while.”

She’s mine.

Mine to care for. Mine to love.

“Sometimes it’s the second try that really sticks.”

For a minute, I let the moment soak into my skin—the strange mixture of loss I carried inside and the peacefulness of a puppy scampering in a field of yellow. How extraordinary life could be: so filled with glorious beauty and heartrending despair. And so often swirled together so that you couldn’t separate the two.

Those were the days I went moment to moment, finding something to be grateful for, some beauty to make me believe the pain wouldn’t always be so bad.

Choice is such a loaded word, isn’t it?

What would I do if I could do anything at all? What would that be?

I’d never dared to dream because in my mind, dreams never came true. It was too painful to dream, to hope for what could never be and for what I didn’t trust myself to obtain.

After a moment I looked back at the flower, taking comfort in the moment, finding thankfulness and hope in one delicate flower that had somehow found a way to bloom, even through the dark, icy cold.

Will you come back?

I need you to go on as if I won’t.