To say goodbye to one person you love
is to say goodbye to part of yourself.
I must have them, you think. You think,
I can never be whole without them.
But in that gap of the fabric, that tear made of love,
is a place you can climb into at any time
and know the true shape of yourself, which is infinite.
Sometimes it takes the sharp ache of loss
to feel into the truth of our interconnectedness,
to know what the quantum physicists know—
how woven we are with each other,
with the universe,
how woven we are with all that is living
and all that is what we call dead.
Though it’s science, it’s also a kind of faith.
And it’s dark. And it’s sweet. And it’s beautiful,
and it’s terrifying, this thread that reminds us
just how much we belong to the rest of the world,
this thread we can’t untie even if we want to,
this thread that tethers us to one another, to eternity.