My father loved calling 911 just so he could press the phone to his chest
and make the emergency operator listen to the sound of his beating heart.
See? he’d say with a smug grin on his face. I’m alive, I am.
To this day I still believe the only reason he ever called them up
was to confirm his own existence.
Some of us slip through the cracks so subtly, but we slip through all the same.
Tell me what the difference between a homeless man begging on the street
and a girl who lost her virginity at thirteen is.
Make me believe there is one.
And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel just keeps growing
smaller and smaller, flickering like a candle
slowly burning down to its last wick.
So many hours lost in all this loneliness,
so much grief.
Sorrow can fill up a person’s bones until it begins to leak out
like tears. We’re all overflowing.
So whenever I receive anonymous flower bouquets in the mail,
or find a note pinned to the hood of my car with only one sentence on it,
written by a stranger (I won’t be home for dinner tonight, it says),
I learn how to love those ordinary gifts.
Because, in the world we live in today,
with school shootings and drivebys and senseless suicides,
even a few dust motes can be something to cherish.