Change.

When I got back to my apartment from that vigil, I didn't have a patch of dirt that felt like the one your memory should be settled in.

And I didn't write about it then, but the printed sheets of paper that told us the measures of our communal grief were embedded with seeds.

Starting over again
Show us how this should end
Read the words we know so well, try to find a fault in every phrase
Now sing along, does the meaning change?

So I put the sheet aside, and when I moved into my home in Georgia, I put that sheet on my refrigerator door, because I am nothing if not morbid.

And periodically I thought of you, but the idea of putting that paper in the ground never sat right with me in that house.

Boys brought up a separate pair, they stayed along a singular demand
Write it out in phrases spent, heighten every stake, the rent is raised
We're turning down every sad request, stranding us so far away from you

I moved to Boston.  The sheet came with me.  Another apartment.  

Another yard.

Another fridge.

I couldn't.

Save me anyway, save me anyway, but I'm not coming home today, I'm not coming home to stay, you'll wait, I'll be gone

I don't remember where you came from, before Macon.  I know we talked about it, once, on a run.

I do remember the echo of the pain in your voice, and something in your tone telling me that the place before Macon was one you'd left, or maybe fled.  You'd wound up kind and vivacious and warm in spite of that place, not because of it.

So, in some ways Macon was as much your home as anywhere, but it never felt like it would be the wrong thing to bury that paper somewhere else.

But I still didn't do it.

Springs came and went.

We moved forward and you
Settled into a life where nothing was new
When your words were watered down, we'd steal the page and help you read aloud
But like a song finds you in your bed, it leaves you in your sleep, to read alone

It's been sixteen years.

I reached Pittsburgh two years ago. Another fridge.

But this year. . .

Maybe it's the yardwork I've been doing.  Something about the way this house is the first place where I've felt a joy when the yard turns to vibrant green in the spring.    The way I've been motivated to dig, and to move pavers, and to sit outside just to stare at the grass like an Octogenarian.

Maybe it's the woman with the kind eyes, who crinkles her nose a little like you did when she laughs.  
Her questions have clawed at my edges, and when I answered her questions with my own this winter, I found a story enough like ours that I almost screamed aloud in my empty garage, staring at my phone in one part horror and one part comfort.

Grief loves company.

Maybe it's watching my longest-running intimate relationship fade, dissolving under the weight of distance and dissonance.  A comfortable friendship growing in its place.  Acknowledgement of change.

A different kind of grieving.

Couldn't leave a message on your line

You couldn't find the words to tell me what you were thinking, that night.

I'll never have answers half as loud as the questions.

But I can put this paper in the ground.

I can crumble the soil in my hands.

I can bring water and wait for the sun.

I can welcome change.

Modern Skirts - Save Me