Fragile, a poem

Nobody tells you how thin it all is

until it isn't there anymore.

Twenty-one years, I thought that was the beginning...

turns out it was the whole thing.

A lease signed. A uniform waiting.

Plans made with the easy confidence

of someone who thought he had time.

I used to think life was solid,

something you could lean your whole weight into.

Now I know it's more like glass held up to light, beautiful because it could break, breaking because that's what glass does.

He hugged like he knew this.

Like every hello was borrowed time

and he wasn't going to waste it on a handshake.

Every phone call ended in I love you

because some part of him understood

what I'm only learning now, at fifty-something, standing over an urn,

picking out the perfect inscription for a boy

who should've been picking out furniture.

I go back to work. I answer emails.

I tell people I'm fine

in the specific way you tell people you're fine

when you are, in fact, learning to breathe again from scratch, one bad night at a time.

Life is fragile.

Everyone says it like it's a warning.

Nobody says it's also the reason his hugs meant something,

his I love yous weren't just words, his 21 years weigh more than most people's eighty.

The glass broke.

I'm still here, holding the pieces up to the light, looking for him in every one of them.

Life is fragile...