Walking with their shadows

I hear her voice. I hear his voice. I see them young, in woollen clothes warming their bodies against the cold and snowy background in photos with scalloped edges that framed the promise of their future, of a lifetime of love and togetherness, a lifetime of who they were before me. A lifetime that today has me gliding my fingers along those edges and wondering where their time went. A box filled with photographs I touch, photographs I absorb and yet swallow questions I have, questions I never asked, never can. I think he'd never seen the likes of her before, and she, well she fell in love with the twilight of his eyes.

We all did that, fell in love with the likes of her, fell in love with his eyes. We could not help ourselves.

Their shadows frame my life today. I have their footprints on my heart. I am still tumbling over losing them. There is a harmony I'm part of, and yet I'm the only voice singing out loud. You might think it's been years, enough time has passed, and you'd be right. But for me, for me, losing them is losing my voice. It's a silent scream in a deafening mist, a misty ghost in a frightening fog, a startling bell ringing in the silent dark.

Every morning the sun rises and I open my eyes and blink at the wonder of the light and the shadows and I try so hard to find them there. I wonder if I can pick up the pieces of them and place myself in the spaces between the edges of the losing and maybe, just maybe, float there for a moment.

I'm walking through a tidal pull between their lives and their deaths. But every morning, my faith in them and my faith in the light gives me my footing. We did the best we could, we had the best there was, and all the music in the world holds us in the high notes, the long notes, the magnificent and slow-moving pauses between lessons and knowledge, between a beating heart and love.