At night, each footfall.

They are yin and yang, each toeing the line on other ends of the room. So very tired.

I know less now about my own life than I did when I was 21. I own more things. I have responsibilities that I never thought would exist back then. I still haven't figured it out, and I am believing more and more that there is nothing grandiose like that. Life is tiny little moments and you stand still and they just pass you by. You stand there waiting for some overt reason to hit you over the head and it never comes, and you find it impossible to make a decision. Little tiny feelings and it's not a road but thousands of tiny little tributaries with many many opportunities to funnel back if you lose your way. "Woman! Why are you thanking us as if we just saved your life? It's all just adventure!"

One of the generals inside the army of the light. That's what my title used to be. I will save you. We run at night to tap back into that girl who wouldn't have backed down. He told me, "I want to do it right next time," as though he already had a plan laid out in his mind. As though he had spent time thinking about it, thinking of what went wrong and how to remedy it. I am

no longer the moment of hesitation. Just get it right. We waste our lives, being too kind.

A cold bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and tall grasses and you, late summer sun throwing heavy shadows in the Ohio autumn, there was nothing that was going to stop us. To be that naive and so sure of everything. I remember, the way it used to smell taking walks at dusk on the westside early September, you could hear 41 go past and the woodsmoke billowing up out of happy chimneys, the absolutely exquisite feeling of belonging to something like that. We walked like warriors and I would have followed you to the end. I have only changed by growing weaker.

The tide will turn, each day is a lesson. We don't live for each other, we can't. Side by side, each on our own tributary, the fates crossing our paths. It happens, it does. Patience.