I held you tight in my clenched fists until my hands ached from holding you, but I couldn't stop you seeping through my fingers like sand. Bit by bit, in gray and bright tiny pieces you fell away and were caught by the wind, until one day my eyes were opened and I unclenched my fists. I'll admit that it hurt. The motion was unfamiliar and the process slow, but I did it.

And you were born up on the wind and for a moment my face stung with the feel of your bright passing, and I felt fear. I wanted to snatch you back, but I couldn't do it. How does one reconstruct a handful of sand?

It's hard to let go of what we know, of what's familiar even when the familiar has begun to hurt or is even long past hurt and well into pain. There is comfort in holding on, and fear in letting go, but change is constant and real, and static is nothing more than an illusion.

And I wish I could stop the world and melt into one pure moment of loving you, but I can't do it. The world exceeds my grasp and continues to spin on it's axis despite my wanting to stop it, and I breathe out and I breathe in and I do it again and again and again, remembering to keep my hands loose because time is relentless and passes tick tock like the clock that murmurs it's passing.

Echos of you resound in my head, and my lips form a reflexive smile as if for a moment I'd captured you.

I can only say that I am grateful for having known the weight and shifting texture of you. I have loved the grit and softness, the way you abraded my skin even as you kissed it, and I'm glad that I held on even when it hurt, and I will hold you always and forever, even as I am blown away bit by shiny bit in flecks of darkness and light into the wind, as I run through the fingers of a different hand and follow you into the wide unknown.

©Just Kate, 2009