Wandering

            I was there when my mother died and I was there when my father died. They both said the same thing to me: “I love you.”

            And then I was alone. My life was the same; friends, job, apartment, fish tank. But I found myself looking for something I hadn’t noticed I’d wanted before. In libraries, in bars, on mountaintops. I told people everything about my life; sometimes I listened to theirs. It was an instinct, a downward movement in my chest and arteries. My parents’ love had been in my existence my entire life, and now it was gone.