Path near the Williamette River

While I was away a lot happened with me since I left.

When I left I'd asked that all the time I'd spent thinking about death be returned to me, and it was.

Pretty amazing, like magic is amazing, like being alive.  

I know what you're going to say: that you weren't in the picture. But you're always in the picture, even when it appears that you aren't.

If you weren't here I wouldn't be seeing you, and if I wasn't seeing you I wouldn't be here.

No, it's not just about you or me--that much you know--and yes it is about you and me--that much I know too.

There's only this time and this place, a path through the woods not far from the river where I'm walking behind people I love.

That's me taking the picture, the one you can't see, of you and you and you walking ahead of me. To me it's a picture of what can happen if and when I walk out of the life I'm living and into another life that only knows what's living, so that I could die someday with the knowledge that I hadn't wasted my time being alive thinking about death.

Wherever this path ends doesn't end.