On Joy and Its Shadow

   

It's funny to think about the things in your life that can make you cry just knowing that they existed, can then become the same things that make you cry knowing that they're now gone. - Ted Lasso

I did not know, at first,

that joy carries a shadow.

It arrived clean as morning,

a cup of light, a voice,

something breathing beside me

that asked for nothing.

I lived inside it

the way one lives inside weather,

thinking only of warmth,

thinking this is how the world works,

forgetting that every season moves.

Later, the same thing

stood up and left.

That’s when I learned

how absence has weight,

how memory can bruise

by touching gently.

It isn’t strange, this double grief -

to miss what’s gone

and to miss the self

who didn’t yet know loss.

Still, I wouldn’t refuse it.

Not the love.

Not what followed.

The tears belong to both.

What we’re given

isn’t meant to stay.

It passes through -

or it leaves -

and either way

doesn’t come back the same.

What remains

might be room.

Might be caution.

A warmth that thins with use,

or a carefulness

where ease once lived.

The heart doesn’t break cleanly.

It doesn’t open all the way.

It adjusts.

It carries what it can

and sets the rest down

without ceremony.

If there is grace in that,

it isn’t named.

If there is loss,

it isn’t finished.

The heart goes on -

altered,

unsettled,

still capable,

still limited,

never quite certain

which change it survived.

GBS jr

1990