April 2021

I saw orange painted footprints behind me as I walked. I was barefoot but the footprints were boots. Why boots? Because, you put boots on when you must do the work that must be done. 

I do the work that must be done. 

I am tired of the work that must be done. 

I am tired of systems built to reward those that learn to manipulate the system. 

Hot and warm tears fall down my cheeks. 

Like you falling down a mountain. 

Did I get to love you?

Did I get to be loved by you?

The universe sure delivers the beauty and the brutality and the brevity of it all. 

To live a life from now on means that held within every moment of my continued life, my breath, you are dead. 

How is this held?

How is this held within me? 

My head the first year after the accident, a chorus of, “Travis is dead. Travis is dead. Travis is dead,” played on repeat within my mind at forefront or at backdrop to all of my thoughts. I soft choir crying. Attempting to make sense of what I cannot make sense of.

I cry too, head. 

I cry too, choir.

Where are you, Trav? 

Meesh and I ran through the woods with Charlotte. The Earth buzzed and I asked her, “Do you see that gold orange orb?” 

“Over there?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Yes, I see it.”

I don’t know how to live and breathe without you and yet I do. I don’t know how to do all you did for us on top of all that breathing and living and doing what I must do. 

I put on my boots. 

What is this mess and nectar and heartache and marrow of existence? 

How are we all so connected and intertwined and yet alone and detached. 

How have we walked so far, so shortly, from one another?

Why do we perpetuate the cult of the self? 

It seems like the loneliest cult. 

How do we survive the knowledge of losing all that we love?

The knowledge without the comprehension because we cannot know what we haven’t experienced. 

I have lost what I have loved. 

In the deepest meanings of those two words. 

I have held infinite love. 

Which means, I hold infinite loss. 

How do you hold it all? 

And, in holding the two together in these small bare hands, I realized the greater truth of infinite— that on any given day:

The day I met Trav.

The day I detached and reattached to the universe the first time we made love. 

The day he proposed. 

The day we married. 

The day he threw me over his shoulder and forced me to talk. 

Great dam within me breaking.

Thank you, Poppi. 

The day I was editing pictures and he had fallen and he had died. 

So, I died too. 

The next day, when I could hold him but he could no longer hold me. 

The day the house shook with earthquake and power and lightening strikes all around us. Us. 

Where are you, Trav?

Orange Gold Orb. 

The day we traveled to the heart of the cosmos and the lines that surrounded all of us turned to infinity when I turned my perspective, when you turned my perspective, with the slightest touch. 

With all of the touch. 

The days I laid on the floor and wept. 

I realized on any given day, I think I know the depth or breath, I think I am beginning to understand the idea of infinite, only to wake up the next day with the greater knowledge that I have no fucking clue. 

Because, each night, I go to bed. 

And, I wake up. 

And, it has grown. 

And, I don’t know how. 

This infinite loss. 

It grows.

This infinite love. 

It grows.