Wild Cherry

She hasn’t died. She’s just gone home. returned to the source, is the way I’d say it. Back to that quiet place that carries us before we arrive, and waits for us long after we go. She hasn’t died. She’s just gone home. For death does not oppose life, merely birth, and so I still feel her. Not in breath or voice— but in stillness. She is there in the spaces between things. She is there in the way the light moves across the bedroom wall in the late afternoon. She is there in the dawn birdsong, She is there in the hollow of her pillow, still there beside my own. She hasn’t died. She’s just gone home. For I don’t believe in endings anymore. Just changes in form. Just a turning back, like the ocean tide we would watch each day, folding into itself. She hasn’t died, I know, because I held her hand and walked her to the precipice. And when she let go, when she stepped off, our love didn’t go anywhere. It still lingers. It still follows. It stays behind. It goes ahead, like we’re both walking the same road— just on different sides of the street. One day I’ll too take that path to the edge. And when I do, I know I won’t be alone. I’ll just be going home.