I’m back to living in my house across town, which is now laden with our things from our life in the old house.  Very little has been processed, on any level, and each day I float like a ghost past the stacks of music on the table and his leather jacket hanging from the back of a chair without touching a thing.

I spend too much time thinking.  Maybe that’s why I find myself drawn to anything that engages my senses… I have taken up riding my bike for long, slow miles. I’m not interested in exercise, or in getting anywhere. Rather, I am satisfied to hear red-winged blackbirds chatter at each other, to see turtles sunning themselves on driftwood in the canal, to witness the changing of the valley floor from brown to purple as the heal-all blossomed, now yellow as the dandelions take over, to breathe heady, saturated air over the channel and feel how the weight of it changes where the tributary meets the larger river.

I color. (See: featured image of snail) Sometimes I sing, but not often. I miss him every day, from my first thought in the morning to my last one before I submit to whatever sleep I can get. I miss him. Nothing in this world can replace him; so I find myself looking for some new way to engage with the incomplete world that’s left. I do my best.