After the handshake I walked out.
Across the pavement.
Flat light.
The kind that belongs to neither day nor night.
I sat in the car.
The door closed.
I let the thing happen
that I had been holding
through the warmth of the room,
through the careful language,
through the kindness
of people who could see what I needed
and could not give it.
They could see it.
That is the part I am still sitting with.
And then I drove home.
And then I made dinner.
And then I answered emails.
Twenty-five years of that.
Not the crying.
The returning.
The next morning.
The next September.
In the shoulders.
In the jaw.
In the particular way
a body learns to wait
when waiting is the only contract
it has ever been offered.
Someone should have put a hand
on the roof of the car.
Should have stood in the flat light
and said: I know.
This is real.
I see the cost of this.
Nobody did.
So I am saying it now
to whoever is sitting
in a parking lot somewhere
with the engine running
and the building still visible
in the rear-view mirror.
I know.
This is real.
I see the cost of this.
You can drive home now.
