A cabbage sort of rose, blood red ranunculus, alstroemeria and scabiosa, with remnants of last week’s larkspur.

If I don’t put it into words tonight, can you take a rain check?  For one thing, I need a little more time for everything to sink in.  No.  That’s not true.  I don’t have the energy to let it all sink in – which is what will happen if I start writing.

Before Wednesday, my imagination was starting – just starting – to entertain the afterwards.  I indulged myself in future arms and kisses, and the smell of your cheek – reciting a familiar spell I used to cast on myself for other reasons.   I fooled myself into a little mirage of destiny on the horizon, as if I had misread the map.

But then came the worst turbulence yet – another sickening drop into the depth of empty air.  The nearer we draw to safe harbor, the more the demon howls.

And yet the real world – the world we are entitled to live in again – still has us in its orbit, pulling us through this awful storm. A beacon with its own center of gravity. I believe it.  The precious, ordinary day is coming when I can stand a little too close to you and ask, “Where were we?”