What forever means when you really mean it

She had this thing she would do where she would kiss the palm of my hand in the morning that was pretty great. The way her head turned away from me but still found me. Did I tell you this yet? I feel like I told you all this.

Okay I don’t care I’m telling it again. You have to picture it. The sun is coming in all over the room on account of how I never put up curtains. Curtains, they prompt me toward sleeping in. She is mostly on top of me, yeah you can figure why, but the real thing is that she takes my arm and raises it a few inches to her lips, and I see her there in profile, in silhouette, and it’s like ten in the morning and there’s no coffee brewing yet even but all the terrible things I’ve ever been through seem worthwhile in that single second, that image burned ferociously into my brain as this is what she is.

But look I feel like I am losing the point here, which is that the things that used to be true that are no longer true are no less true then. And I am sitting here punching myself repeatedly in the mouth with a drink, a double whiskey coke, trying to tell you this story like it is the answer to the whole question of what happened. Which that isn’t even a question is what I’m going to say after I finish this drink and come back with another. For now, though, I am going to sit and look out over the smoke-filled room and think how lovely, all these people, all this pain and stuff inside of them, how it doesn’t ever really get out, but how they keep trying.