These are hers. They have been treasured and guarded, and fought for, and rightfully earned.

Each one is so valuable… life, and love, and loss and laughter layered over each other in complex patterns…

Smooth like pebbles from years of being taken out and turned over, carried in soul pockets and starry eyes.

All kept safe from regret and bitterness, and hoarded for a rainy day that may never come.

I swear I’m just trying to hold them for her, with my hands splayed open as wide as they will go, grasping at the words that fall out of her mouth like diamonds all jumbled together with coal….

…but the holding feels like stealing, because I can’t give them back.

And my hands feel so very heavy trying to hold so many, but I can’t let them fall, because if I don’t carry them, then who will?

True storytelling is a gift. It is hers.

And in my mouth, so painfully empty of the magic she embodies, I can feel the words losing their life… turning into dust that grits between my teeth as my voice tries to find them.

I hate watching her search. Looking exactly where she left them, and being unable to find them.

All the while,

They’re right here.

I have them.

And they feel so heavy in my hands.

I try to return them… try to fit these misplaced fragments into the space they once filled.

She doesn’t recognize them.

My pale skeletons look nothing like the life she has lived.