Sometimes The Right Thing Feels

In The Darkest Hour Of Winter, When The Starlings Had All Flown Away, Gretel Samuelson Fell In Love. It Happened The Way Things Are Never Supposed To Happen In Real Life, Like A Sledgehammer, Like A Bolt From Out Of The Blue. One Minute She Was A Seventeen Year-old Senior In High School Waiting For A Sicilian Pizza To Go; The Next One She Was Someone Whose Whole World Had Exploded, Leaving Her Adrift In The Milky Way, So Far From Earth She Was Walking On Stars.

In Losing A Friend, She Is Reminded Of All She Has Lost And All She Stands To Lose Again. There Is Nothing To Be Done To Make It Any Easier. We All Grieve Alone.

I Thought Of The Bowl Of Water My Mother Taught Me To Look Into. It Was True, Everything A Person Ever Needed To Know Was Right There In A Single Bowl Small Enough To Fit In The Palm Of One Hand.

They Say That Dogs May Dream, And When Topsy Was Old, His Feet Would Move In His Sleep. With His Eyes Closed He Would Often Make A Noise That Sounded Quite Human, As If Greeting Someone In His Dreams. At First It Seemed That He Believed Sara Would Return, But As The Years Went By I Understood That His Loyalty Asked For No Reward, And That Love Comes In Unexpected Forms. His Wish Was Small, As Hers Had Been -- Merely To Be Beside Her. As For Me, I Already Knew I Would Never Get What I Wanted.

I Wasn't Quite As Certain That I Knew Her Soul. When It Came Right Down To It, I Wasn't Sure She Knew Me Either.