To have loved
and to have suffered. To have waited
for nothing, and for nothing to have come.

A teen girl is shot in the street.

A young man dies on a college campus.

A mother throws her son off a bridge.

Within days, inevitably, a vigil. Candles on cue, to a refrain that has played too many times: This community comes together in support.

But what good is it now, our hand-wringing and alarm, this cooing disguised as comfort?

We are urgent with a terrorized sort of sadness. We come together. But every day we are divided, by politics and opinions, by wounds and hurts. It seems only tragedy binds us.

___

It’s easy to feel stricken. Difficult to put love into action day after day.

___

A friend cried through the Super Bowl commercials. Were the ads that touching, she asks, or is that I've been sick all week and my resistance is low?

Some days a slice of light against the wood floor can break me open.

But isn’t that what we all need now, to feel more?

Let us lower our resistance.

___

And yet. The hand-wringing. The calls for change. It’s exhausting.

Because our pleas ring hollow, small. We feel so much but do so little.

___

But what action, really, would be substantial, meaningful, enough?

___

So long I was surrounded by vitality. Now, neighbors, friends, and family are dying. This is not new. But the sting is fresh.

A friend offers what seems simple but sage advice: “Just love them now and for the rest of your days and know that they love you.”

Loving, then, is that easy? And that hard.

___

I get a massage, but what I really want is a spiritual experience. Strong hands to dig through flesh to find gristle and bone, to excise the deep cavities where sadness takes hold. I want to be remade, cleansed, and spare.

___

The night is briny and thick. Somewhere, someone, is sinking. Someone is always dying.

___

Death is sorrowful but not tragic. Let us not turn this into a project.

___

And yet, let us not turn away.