I’m not sure how long it’s been, but it feels like an eternity. Two weeks feel like they’re almost too much to document, too much for 500 words. It’s interesting that some of the more defining moments in life are the ones that are most difficult to capture with simplicity. Pictures might be better, less subjective, but infinitely less appropriate. It was similar when my father died. I remember every moment of it, the goodbyes we said, the fact that I’d smoked a cigarette before returning in a rush to my parents home to, of all things, close the browser on which I’d mistakenly left my blog awake and vulnerable for my mom and dad to discover, for them to read in nothing less than horror. I remember later scouring the aisles of a San Francisco grocery store with Stacy and her beau, all looking for the perfect 1 am snack. And getting the phone call that morning and asking if my mother was kidding about his death. What a ludicrous and completely honest thing to say. I have documented little of it but remember it vividly all the same.

The past two weeks are similar, foggy yet perfectly defined. I received a letter, one possibly prompted by words written here not too long ago. It was exquisite, loving, and generous. If you didn’t know better, you’d think this was a man who was courting me rather than saying goodbye. I cried harder than I have in recent memory, the kind of crying that leaves your insides hollow but holds the promise of finally being empty. Cleansed. I packed up his things, lovingly, because there is no other way, and left them for a daytime retrieval, thinking all the while that I couldn’t believe I was at this point yet again. Again. And I came home expecting more emptiness, only to find yet another loving letter, and some of the most beautiful flowers in shades of pink I’m convinced I hadn’t before seen.

It’s hard to make sense of a warm, accepting breakup. It’s easier to go hating into that good night, to rage against him and whatever circumstances delivered the unfortunate to your doorstep, complete with an attractive and most buoyant bow. My, how that would be easier. Sometimes things don’t work out that way, because you’re adults, after all, ones who not only maintain jobs and a regular dry cleaning schedule but respect and love one another, ones who know there are more important things in life than grudges and disdain. Such emotions take up too much space in the chest, detract from those things that could otherwise intrigue you. The smell of garlic in a hot pan, the gorgeous description of Rabbit’s next sordid adventure, the ache of successive sneezes that reminds you that seasons inevitably change.

Luscious, all of it. The screaming yellow of lemons at the market, the silence of an early weekday rise. The promise of today, tomorrow, of falling in love and someday not being nudged away from it. Luscious. All of it.