However briefly, however incompletely, our visit to him that day normalized him, let him turn from isolation and fear to the immeasurable relief of loving companionship. A note our class later received from his mother said that our visit seemed to sustain him until the day he died. He’d kept everything we brought him in a circle around him. She said he died knowing in full measure how much he was cared for. I hope that’s true.

I come to a tree so rich with autumn’s golds and reds it makes for a mild ache. I lie down under it, close my eyes, and let my mind wander. I think of all that is happening elsewhere, as I lie here. Nearby, I can hear the sounds of a road crew. Somewhere else, monkeys chatter in trees. A male seahorse becomes pregnant. A diamond forms, a bee dances out directions, a windshield shatters. Somewhere a mother spreads peanut butter for her son’s lunch, a lover sighs, a knitter binds off the edge of a sleeve. Clouds gather to make rain, corn ripens on the stalk, a cancer cell divides, a little league team scores. Somewhere blossoms open, a man pushes a knife in deeper, a painter darkens her blue. A cashier pours new dimes into an outstretched hand, rainbows form and fade, plates in the earth shift and settle. A woman opens a velvet box, male spiders pluck gently on the females’ webs, falcons fall from the sky. Abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything. You can want to live and end up choosing death; and you can want to die and end up living. What keeps us here, really? A thread that breaks in a breeze. And yet a thread that cannot be broken.

I open my eyes, look up at leaf-framed pieces of the sky. I do hope Danny knew. I hope Chip knew, too. I hope for everything, now.

I get up, dust off my jeans, and call Frank. It’s time to go home and get ready.

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