We will meet again.
I know it, for all things end. Sentences, rainstorms, movies—all of them end. So too must this season of bottomless grief and fear.
And we will meet again.
I will come to you and embrace you, and the scent of someone else’s shampoo will bring tears to my eyes. Perhaps we shall sit across from each other at a table, and I will count your freckles and synchronize my breathing with yours. Perhaps I will collapse into sobs of mingled euphoria and grief, to see your face before me, to acknowledge the pain of having been apart from you. It could be that I hold you so tightly that I bruise your ribs, or approach you cautiously, like a lone wolf padding her way out from the cover of the trees. Tentative. It’s been so long, in the forest.
But we will meet again.
Maybe I will kiss you, even if you are not a lover. Maybe you will make us a pot of coffee and I will watch your hands as you do, which suddenly seem godlike as they sweep through the space that has been empty and cold for so long. Look, how you are bringing motion into stillness, waves into oceans, wind into trees. You might get awed silence from me, or I might want to talk to you for hours, about everything. What an extravagance it is, to behold someone who, for months, I could only reach out and touch in my sleep, in a dream.
But we will meet again.
Maybe we will cry together, because we have been holding in our tears for so long just to cope with each day, and we must weep for those now lost, for destroyed futures and vanished livelihoods. We will cry for the lost time, for our own loneliness. Sometimes—usually—you need a witness to your grief. Maybe I can be that for you, and you for me. It is hard to cry alone.
Perhaps we will dance together, just because we can, haltingly at first, and then with abandon.
We will smile. We will grasp hands.
We will meet again.