The Last Time

Sometimes, the last time you see someone, you don’t know it is the last time. There is no way to predict what life will bring after you part. A bullet. A car accident. A final falling out.

I have not known when would be the last time, with not so many, but an important few. I strain to know, to remember. Was there sadness? Was it just routine? What did their face look like, the shape of their shoulders as they walk away?

It is true, on some level, that I expect to have joy snatched away. So each good-bye is perhaps a little more freighted, as I try hard to remember. Saturday on the street corner, a glorious light and wildly framed by garlands of fake flowers tacked to the fence. Thursday morning, one kiss, another kiss, and I look up into his face and am pinned, as I am on occasion, by the color of his eye, to be held in his regard, the intimacy of the curve of his eyelid. The things I will need to know, can never be enough but will have to be enough, if there is no more.