I'll be fine

Before that, a kitchen.

Yellow curtains I chose because they looked like something

from a life I hadn't lived yet.

Coffee going cold on the counter.

His hands around the mug

the way hands hold things

they don't know they're holding

for the last time.

I am already at the funeral

before I know he is sick.

I pick out what to wear

on an ordinary Tuesday in March.

Something dark. Something that says

I loved him but I am still standing.

I don't know why I do this.

I have always been braced

for the wrong disaster.

We are seven years old and running

through a sprinkler in July.

He trips. I laugh.

He laughs too, eventually.

I don't know yet that eventually

is the word our whole lives will hinge on.

The doctor uses the word prognosis

like it is a gift,

like precision is the same as kindness.

I am in the room.

I am also in the yellow kitchen

watching the coffee go cold,

thinking: I should have said something.

I always think this

in the present tense.

He is telling me a joke

I've already heard.

I let him finish.

I laugh at the right part.

This is love...

letting someone arrive somewhere

you've already been,

and pretending the view is new.

There is a version of this where nothing happens.

We grow old in the ordinary way,

complaining about our knees,

forgetting things in separate rooms.

We visit each other on holidays.

We argue about small things

and mean nothing by it.

In that version, I don't think about him much.

He would understand.

The last thing he said was I'll be fine.

I have been believing him

in advance,

ever since.

The yellow curtains are still there.

I haven't changed them.

Every morning the sun comes through

and lights up the cold coffee,

the empty counter,

the exact shape of what's missing...

and I think: not yet.

I think: still.

I think it like a door I'm holding open.

I think it before I know what I'm thinking.

I think it first.