Eleven years ago, I was best friends with a pessimist. I felt, though, that his pessimism was the product of idealism met with too much disappointment: it was a guard against hope. “We are all ultimately alone,” he used to say. That there would never be someone who would be with you your entire life. I always fought against that statement — and perhaps my optimism was, in fact, founded on pessimism. It’s a given that no single person would see us to the end. But allow space in your heart for a few at a time, and perhaps that’s a different kind of full. Different people come to us at different seasons — it is many, many departures, and we grieve and receive simultaneously.
As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror: it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond,
a churning sea of poppies--
Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to return:
this one summer we have entered eternity.
I felt your two hands
bury me to release its splendor.
-- Louise Glück, "The White Lilies"
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