There was no one for you to impress and no one for you to offend. You were right there and I was afraid of how real you were, which made me question … - Mary-Louise Parker

I don’t know if you feel conflict when you hear the phrase “new reality,” or if it makes you want to throw in the towel. When you realize that the only thing to be counted on is the shifting and reestablishing of proximity, do you ever feel like, why did I bother searching in the first place? We have to rewrite ourselves again and draw all new maps.

We all miss you something fierce, those of us who wouldn't exist had you not kept walking when an ordinary person would have fallen to their knees. To convey in any existing language how I miss you isn't possible. It would be like blue trying to describe the ocean.

I don’t believe in endings, happy or sad, so my relationships with you continue to this day. They are the kind of relationships you have with a pair of skis you know you’ll never have to strap to yourself again. Maybe you never really liked skiing, but enjoyed being a person who could say, “Looks like I’ll be hitting the slopes this weekend!” So you kept on even though it cost too much to get down a hill. Gave you windburn. I see nothing weird about keeping those skis in the basement. They offer a little nostalgia for crappier times. More importantly, they serve as a reminder that I no longer have to ski.