What once seemed like vital footage has now been effortlessly cut. Back then, when I balanced walking through hospital doors and arroyos, I held on to every precious video clip and voice memo, but now, in this return and on the summer solstice, I edit and imagine lengths of film curled at my feet. Has technology made this too easy? I accept the grace of a copy to generously subtract from. I wish the refrain had been, “the hero leaves the caregiver stays home,” but this will take time to fix. A reciprocity of give and take. You’ll see how it was winter, a snowy one. Footfall resonates from ground textures. Back and forth between two front doors. A slow pan across the collections in his room. Of the seen, this is less than half of the original composition. Of the unseen, it has multiplied. He asked me from the other room, “Are you there, hon?” I’m here, dad. “I’m here, and here, and here,” we now say in unison. My voice cringes the roots of my nerves as it fades in, and the roots forgive as it fades out. Many voices are at the surface of detection like transparent koi. What did I forget? I felt my eyes dissolve in the shifting carpet and was always looking out windows. I recommend looking out a window. I saw a benevolent spirit in the closed patio umbrella, and I was stilled by her wind-animated dress. One time, I just walked around the house and hummed. I let strangeness relax my throat’s constriction. A length of fence splits and becomes two, converges in a fold. The middle gives flight to two sides. Past and present converse fluidly here. A simple pattern simply everywhere, iterating at the seam. I like that the interior is reflected in the exterior, I said as I filmed through a window that also showed what was inside. It was anticipatory grief. I walked in/with/through it. This is that anticipatory grief returned to from the passage of grief’s simple/strange healing.
Prompt:
Accept the grace of return.
