First, no one in the throes of devastation
knows how to do this. Stand amid the ash,
the blown-apart detritus of your life and cry.
Sob hard. You must empty the contents of your soul
onto the ground where you once lived and loved,
where your grandparents once lived and loved,
where your parents did, too. Where you made
a home/children/pets/family. Wail. Swear.
Collapse into the ash of what was. No way
to know what will come. How you go on.
Just the tiniest glint out of the corner
of a teary eye that somehow you will.

Allow for the unfolding of something you
can’t see. Don’t call it faith. Don’t call it hope.
Certainly don’t call it love, though it might
arrive as the offering of a stranger’s hand,
attached to one who brings a blanket,
a warm cup of comfort, who sits with you
and says, Tell me about it.

And you do. The story gushing like water
from the hoses that didn’t arrive in time,
like flames rising. Tell it all, especially
the ugly parts. Cry more. Wallow.
Don’t be your strongest self.

And then, drawing a deep, new breath, stand.
One foot moves. Then the other. Then the
first foot. Then the second. And there you are
walking away, yes, but also walking toward
what you cannot see under an umbrella of blue.
The smoke is clearing. Inhale deeply.
This is what starting over looks like.

•••

(With thanks to our dear friend and amazing photojournalist
Genaro Molina for the use of this striking photo.)