Some say follow your heart.

But when your heart is heavy like led, laden with grief and guilt, you can easily become inert, following nothing, going nowhere.

Some say act your way into belief.

This is faith, I know, though it sounds pathetic and untrue, like the mysticism of a rain dance. Do their dances bring rain, or do they dance until it rains, not realizing that it was going to do so anyway, in due time?

Yet I choose to act, not out of proof or fullness of love, nor even Grace. I choose it because I know better than to let myself become stuck.

It is almost September, and this shift in time feels a little like betrayal, like the closing of a door, like the last look before really saying goodbye.

I could do the hard things, the first weeks of silence, the wake of a deeply changed after; it’s the monotony of a long life alone that I just can’t seem to stand. How dare time move without you. I put one step in front of the other, but my energy is waning.