I threw my body to the ground and wept.

This isn't me. This isn't me. THIS ISN'T ME!

I tried to convince myself, but it was futile.

Maybe some other day this wasn't me. Maybe some other day I was that fearless viking warrior queen: tall and proud and lacking even the ability to shed a tear. Maybe some other day I was a woman who evoked feelings of fear in others-- a woman who men shrank away from when she stood at her full height-- whose shoulders were set wide-- whose eyes squinted in permanent cat-like glare, angry at the world and anyone who might dare to tell her no. Maybe some other day. Maybe every other day. But not today.

Today I was small. Today I wanted to curl into the caverns of my heart like a snail retreating into its shell. Today I would bargain with God almighty. Today I was broken.

Broken by three words:

Multi. Organ. Failure.

God. Please. God PLEASE. Please. I know, God. We don't bargain. I know.

But God, please. Please don't take her from me.

Please.

Please don't let her die.

I will do anything.

I was afraid. Horrifically afraid.

I wanted to throw up and then hurl myself out the 3rd story window.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to melt into nothingness.

I wanted to drown my tears in the folds of her Minnie mouse nightgown and never emerge again.

But I didn't.

I hid in the bathroom for all of five minutes, threw myself to the ground, silently wept, bargained her life for mine, and then wiped the snot off my face and pasted on a smile.

I climbed into the hospital bed next to her, held her, stroked her flaccid hair.

I whispered in her ear. I begged her to wake up. I promised she could have that kitten she'd been wanting. I promised we'd make those necklaces she'd asked for. I promised the extra story before bed, and the extra kiss, and the one more drink of water. I promised her four candles on her birthday cake this summer.

I promised to never forget again.

I would never forget again the value of her life to me.

I held her all night, flinching at every monitor beep, praying, pleading, forsaking every physical and mental need. When the sun was slicing through the curtains, I got out of the bed and stood.

Enough. God. I have had enough.

Pass this cup from me.

Use me.

Heal her.

I laid my hands on her small body. They nearly covered her completely. My hands are large and she was so, so small.. barely three years old.

I felt power coursing in my veins. The exhaustion of the last two weeks fell away as the shafts of sunlight burned into the small room, enveloping us both in blinding light.

Oh Lord, my God.

You who are able.

Let not my will, but your will be done.

It felt as though my hands were afire, and the moment stretched into eternity. A peace that passes understanding flooded my spirit.

And when I opened my eyes...

She was smiling up at me.

The hardest thing about life is remembering all of the things that were better before...

After each wash and dry cycle,

that once soft blanket begins to clump into small sticky broken fibers.

Chocolate ice cream no longer tastes like childhood innocence,

but rather a heartbreak remedy for sad rainy days.

Your favorite pair of shiny shoes that your mom bought you for school,

is packed tightly in a blue bin labeled "Haley 2009".

The tree house that seemed like a palace full of potential when you were younger,

now sits as a tiny shack with spiderwebs and lost memories.

...And so with each passing day we are forced to remember things that were better before. Better before time transformed them into something unrecognizable. And better before you grew too old to realize that these things of youthful innocence have become nothing but a pastime.

The hardest thing about life is realizing that you can take nothing back.

Everything you do is final. Every word. Every action. Every thought.

There are no time machines, there are no "take backs"

If you say something mean, you have said it.

If you do something hurtful, you did it.

And for some odd reason, it is the things that hurt that stay the longest.

“How did you know I write? It’s not something I‘ve shared.”

”It’s pretty obvious from your profile. Besides, anyone who speaks so deliberately, so articulately; who uses the vocabulary you use… that person must feel a need to write those words down for posterity, mustn’t they?” As she spoke a long, elegantly painted finger twisted itself around a hanging tendril of hair, whilst the faintest whisper of a smile haunted her otherwise stoid expression. “I simply adore a writer,” she cooed.

Stoid, that is, but for her eyes.

I sensed that we had reached a fulcrum in our conversation. That the beginnings of a salacious relationship teetered upon my reply. But was that what I really wanted from this woman I had just met? Sex? And all of the heavy lifting required afterwards?

She was obviously smart, and playfully beautiful, but mostly I was drawn into those famished eyes of hers which gazed hawkishly back into my own, and to that instinctive caution I felt; that at any moment she might slide over until she was close enough to take a bite from that tender muscle just above my collarbone, her lips and tongue massaging away the pain her teeth would inevitably cause to the fabric of my being.

Of course that is what I wanted, sex. It was why I was here, wasn’t it? But I was a middle-aged, long off the market man feeling his was through this strange, new, matriarchal world, so I selected my words carefully.

“I would hardly call myself a writer.” I spoke slowly, my thoughts tempered by both humility and caution. “What I do,“ I ventured, “is to post stories for other aspiring writers to read on a website in hopes of a few ‘likes’, a couple of reposts, and maybe, if I’m lucky, a generous comment or three? It is nothing glamorous.”

The pointed toe of a heeled pump found my boot under the table, resting itself against my foot, whether accident or signal who could say? But the toe stayed there, not pulling away. “So tell me, Huckleberry. What is it you write on this website that other aspiring writers ‘like’, and repost, and comment on?”

My posture literally sagged as my confidence waned. “Well, I’m partial to happy endings.”

The toe moved away from my boot. “So, you write… fairy tales?”

”Well, not exactly. But fiction.”

”Ewww! I abhor fiction.“ She picked up her expensive cocktail, downing it in a swallow, as I had only until recently hoped she might do to me. “Sorry, but I have to go let my dog out.”

”I understand.” It was disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

”… and to think I was about to let your dog out.” Her nose curled up as she said it as from an unpleasant odor, and she made short, quick strides towards the door, leaving nothing but a shadowy wisp of shea butter on the air to remember her by.

Quicker than I could raise a finger for the waitress to bring the check a mousy brunette slipped herself into my date’s still-warm seat, an ice cold beer in either of her hands. She slid one of the across the table towards me. “I heard it all. Believe me, she wasn’t your type anyways. I, on the other hand, love a happy ending.”

Thankfully for this amateurish writer the night was still young, and another chapter that might be liked, reposted and commented upon waited to be written.

So Lieutenant Carver and his former partner drink cans of beer in the police station parking lot. It’s the final season of The Wire, so we’ve seen the officers make mistakes. A recent one ruined a young boy’s life—his foster mom gets third degree burns after a Molotov cocktail attack, and he ends up getting brutalized in a group home. That knowledge haunts Carver. He was a bit of a knucklehead in his early days, but he’s since grown to be a competent cop and a good man who really tried to help that poor kid. “We thought none of it mattered,” Carver says, “but it did.”

He crumples up this cheap beer can. He can’t let go of all the fuckups he must have made when he was young and stupid, and he can’t let go of the fuckup with the kid, and he can’t shake off the fuckups he has yet to make even when he tries to do right, so he just crumples up this can and hurls it onto the station’s roof, where there’s already a pile of a thousand other empties other cops have thrown.

I try to write the beer can.

I think I’ll have the blackened salmon.

The key enters the lock

Echoing a familiar scrape and thunk

Softly jingling returning to the hook

One shoe, the other, returned to the cubby

Soft steps until the unavoidable squeak on the fourth step

Despite the ads, weight on the mattress is noticeable

A cold body comes close to steal body heat

Wrapping around me

Waking me

Realizing

Your ghost still has cold toes

Tear stained pillows offer

No comfort no matter how soft

Do you remember when we used to sleep on the trampoline?

When we'd fall over laughing, bruising ourselves on the gravel of our driveways

Sideways, crashing down

I can hardly remember those days anymore

I only remember the soreness of my limbs and tree bark against my skin while I climbed

The path we carved in the woods to a place we considered sacred and holy

The pain we explained to each other in a tiny room without light

The flowers we exchanged in hopeful dreams of retaliation

The tears in your eyes when you said you were leaving

The breath we shared for three seconds

The time it took to get up

The space between us

The sadness

The pain.

I don't know about you

But I can hardly remember those days anymore

My kitchen contains two bottles of wine that I have stored at 55 degrees Fahrenheit for nine years; I will store them at 55 degrees for at least another fifteen. I will open them on that undetermined date to follow a meal with an undetermined menu for undetermined guests.

My daughters and wife will be there, certainly, and several colleagues of past and future. I’d like to draft the list now, but life doesn’t work that way. Preparing for a dinner party 15-20 years in advance is an exercise in quixotism—who knows? I could be dead myself—but that’s the appeal, I think.

I bought those two bottles of vintage port first: Quinta do Vale Meao, 2011. I had read of the excellent vintage, and when a conference in 2014 took me to Albany, I shopped at a wine warehouse during a break and found them. I have held them ever since, occasionally pulling them from the temperature control to read their labels and daydream.

In centuries past, nobility bought cask after cask of vintage port to celebrate the births of their sons. By the time the children reached adulthood, the port would be ready to drink. Being a teacher in the 21st century, I have more limited means, but I can manage two bottles for my retirement.

I have not decided on the wine for the main course, but I have prepared a trial to help me choose. My wine fridge contains a quality 2007 Barolo and 2010 Bordeaux. Both remain too young to drink, according to Robert Parker’s vintage charts, but someday soon I will have to uncork them anyway and decant for a few hours. Which aged red will I prefer? My decision must come soon so I can invest in a half case or so of something very good. If I retire when first eligible, I only have until 2038 for the wine to mature. I feel less time pressure for the first course’s wine. I live in the Finger Lakes, one of the finest Riesling regions in the world. I can lay my hands on something good just a handful of years in advance.

Once I’ve made a final decision about my retirement date, I’ll make inquiries and hire a private chef, with whom I’ll meet and share the Riesling and the red. We’ll talk about the dishes the chef favors. I will be open to possibilities, but I’d like something with goat cheese to accompany the Riesling, and I’ve thought of braised beef or roast duck for the main course. As I am Irish, there must be roasted potatoes. A dark chocolate dessert must accompany the port.

If some of my former colleagues live out of state, I’ll offer airfare and a hotel; they will be surprise guests. Local colleagues will meet me, somewhere, and a limo will arrive to carry us to the location so past and present can come together, unexpectedly, as they usually do. When the server brings the first course I will raise a glass and acknowledge those who could not join us. I do not now know the middle bit, but I’ll have notes by then. I only know the closing: “Thank you for being there. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing a meal with me.”

The image which haunts Lorelei is an unexpected one. It is not a memory of moonlit trysts, or discreet midday rendezvous, though there had been plenty of those. In fact, she could hardly recall those moments anymore, they having faded into the fog of times past as her love for Julien somehow grew stronger in the wake of their lived, though unshared tragedy.

No, the image that remained with Lorelei was the memory of three bronzed young men sweating under a brassy summer sun, the trio working together, building a home for the one of them who was newly wed, with each striving to outdo the others in front of the new bride, and each having reason to want to.

The young men worked together in the same manner in which they had played as boys, missing no opportunity to either whole-heartedly help one another, or to light-heartedly slander one another’s efforts, whichever the situation called for in the moment. And from the sidelines Lorelei watched her home rise from their calloused, but caring hands the same way she’d watched them as a child, wanting to be a part, but knowing she would be in their way. The boys had been the best of friends for as far back as Lorelei could remember, clear back to when she was little more than a babe watching their hi-jinx from the prison-like confines of her shaded porch, longing to be big enough to join them in the yard for their games. Lorelei had loved these three all her life long.

The first of the three boyhood friends was her own brother Michael, four years Lorelei’s senior and forever her idol; the boy who could do no wrong in her eyes, nor in the eyes of any other in their small town. Beautiful, smart, athletic, and the self-proclaimed protector of his younger sister. That was her Michael.

The second of the boys would become her husband. Julien, the dusty and brash one. Even as a boy Julien had seemed larger than life, and had grown into a man even bigger. Julien first swore to marry Lorelei when she was seven years old, and he twelve. She would never forget the jiggly feeling inside her when Julien had first taken her tiny, vulnerable hands in his own. She had committed herself to Julien then and there, before she was old enough to know what love was, as he gazed straight-away through her eyes and into her soul while solemnly vowing to her, "Don't laugh, Lorelei. I am going to marry you, I swear it. So you must promise me now that you will never love another."

Unable to voice a response, Lorelei had given affirmation to his childish promise with the nod of her head, though even back then she had known the nod was a lie. But she never, all through the years, doubted that Julien had meant his vow, as he took pains to remind her over the course of their lives by insisting that he be the first to hold her hand, and the first to kiss her lips. Julien had been her first for nearly everything.

The third boy, though. It was that third boy whom Lorelei’s fascination revolved around. Rainey, the quiet boy. Rainey was Lorelei's true, if secret love. She had never once looked at Rainey Davan (and she had looked at him a million-billion times) without longing. But Poor Rainey never promised Lorelei anything. He was too quiet, too shy. In all those years Rainy rarely even spoke to her that his tawny cheeks did not blush pink. But he was always there, quietly in the background, quick to help, or quick to hug. And their eyes always met, and her heart always flinched, but there was always Julien between them... right up until that night when he wasn't.

Julien was away at college, Rainey was not. Their meeting that night was accident, or fate, who knows which? The dock was her quiet place, so she was startled, if not disappointed, to find Rainey there sitting alone in the dark. She sat down beside him, their bare feet dangling in the cool water, he as quiet as always while crickets, and bullfrogs, and lightning bugs made light of the solemness surrounding them.

”Are you really going to marry him?”

”Yes. I suppose.”

His breath became ragged. “What will I do then?”

The despair clotting his throat was too much for Lorelei to bare. She would never hurt Rainey for anything, so her hand found his lying on the weathered boards of the dock and rested gently atop it. She could not see his face in the darkness, but she could feel his warmth, and the pulsing of his heart as her own sensed it’s anguish.

”You have waited too long, Rainey. He has already asked me, and I have already said yes.” They were the proper words, though in their own longing they lacked the necessary conviction.

”He claimed you when we were ten.”

”He has always loved me.”

”So have I.”

And rhythmic waves slapped the dock, rocking them. And cool winds caressed their skin, chilling them. And a waning moon shone, speckling black the water, illuminating their furtive love in it’s pale light. And so it happened that Julien was not the first for everything.

Of course, Julien returned come spring, a budding lawyer. The wedding was in the fall, with winter whispering the breeze, and secrets shadowing the leaves. And the honeymoon was long for her, and the Keys as quiet as Rainey, and the ocean as restless as she. And man and wife secretly pretended it was the first time as they explored one another, sharing themselves as love requires. For she did love Julien. He was easy to love. He made love easy. So it was with a surprising unsavoriness that Lorelei discovered what she had always conjectured; that one can indeed love two.

But how could she ever be happy with two? And how could she ever be happy now with one?

A daughter came first, with Rainey’s eyes, then a son with Julian’s. And the girl was shy, and the boy clever, and Julien watched them both grow with interest, but if he wondered he never did so aloud.

And Rainey and Michael went into business together, building houses, and Julien‘s practice grew, and the three of them became as successful as the little town would and could allow them to be, and all were happy, but one. And Rainey Davan never married, and everyone knew why, but one. But the secrets never told themselves, nor the whispers, and her guilt consumed her from the inside out, and Lorelei wondered that Julien never wondered.

It was a weeknight, when her brother Michael was murdered. Lorelei could remember exactly which night, it being her last one with Rainey. Being in business together it was easy for the law to assume Rainey a motive, and so it did, and so the town did, particularly when a witness came forward, declaring the height to be right, and the build… though the witness had not seen the face.

Of course Julien defended Rainey. Julien‘s show was compelling, too, but whispers are too much for truth, and secrets, so Rainey hanged as they all knew he would. Lorelei watched from her husband’s side as her other half died. And though her breath caught once, she did not cry, nor he. She could not, could she? But she could have told. And she wondered that he didn’t? Ever the quiet one, Rainey Davan, right up to the last. Always too quiet for his own good.

But love does not end with death, and Lorelei’s did not. And in the dark of night she slipped away to one love, as always. And as always, the other love watched her go. And as always, the one patiently awaited her. And as always, the other roiled behind.

But she was not bitter as her finger blindly traced the name carved in the stone. How could she be, when she was alive, and still able to love? And she wondered at the behaviors love inspires? For it was love that kept Rainey quiet, when an alibi would save him. Just as it was love kept her quiet, when that alibi was she.

And love reveals itself to each of us differently; some cheating for it, others dying for it, and some? Well, some will kill to keep it.

And that kind of love is still love, is it not?

That killing kind of love is still love.

(Inspired by Lefty Frizell/ Johnny Cash’s “Long Black Veil”. I am personally partial to Lefty’s haunting voice on this tune, but either will skin the cat.)