I didn’t have it in me to write for All Hallow’s Read this year. Part of that is the business of a shifting world (new-ish job, friends in need, lots to do, etc), and part of that is also– shifting world, but on a wider scale; a global scale. It inevitably weighs on the heart, all of the things happening that make you feel infinitely helpless. To watch everyone with strong opinions shove and snarl and then go about their lives, to expect you will do much the same. And of course, opinions or no, you must keep living, because life goes on whether you are ready to move along or not. At least if you move of your own volition, then there’s a greater chance you won’t find yourself somewhere you didn’t choose to be. All of this is to say I’m personally well enough, but emotionally, mentally, existentially exhausted. Not new, really, but here we are.

Here a moment, a nebulous and short letter:

I found myself singing to you, to all of you, in the midst of a crowd in a place adjacent to where you would want me to be. Because I love you, I miss you, all of you. Because I love the people who took me along to the place I didn’t expect to be and were happy to have my company there. I adore them, even as I’m anxious in the places we went all day, just as I ache to know you’re well and seeing the moments where the light hits your environment just right and the coffee is caught in a perfect temperature for sipping. That same awareness is there. So I sang missing you, all of you, and I sang mourning, and I sang with desperate hope for the mornings and evenings to come, to love. The world may spin on, can and will, without any single one of us, but I love you all the same.

I’m tired. I’m not ready to see the new year. I want to meet it with you, all of you.

I just love you. That’s all.