March 4, 2026

the deepest well

I once held onto an argument for more than 11 years. I can still see myself, screaming into a phone by the side of the road in central Connecticut, and then—when the line disconnected—the awful chasm of quiet for the rest of the ride. There’s an inch on my forehead I’m certain got trenched there that day; in it I’ve stuffed every cold shoulder, each dead end, the trying and the failing and the trying and failing again. No matter the string of years that followed, I could never quite even the patch out, and though the origin grievance is long in my rearview mirror, I know I can never go back to the person I was before that call. Instead, I’ve become someone who believes in the gritty triumph of survival. Who knows the price of admission to the theater of desire and love might be despair. Those final miles in the car, I longed to take it back, whatever I’d uncapped from my lungs and set free. But even then, I think I understood that returning to where I’d been, I’d stay wingless. And so I flew on, a wild and mapless bird. I think of this now whenever my heart peers over any abyss that threatens to cleave it in two. I see it’s not the deepest well there is. I touch the skin that forever bears the mark. I scan the unlived distance of what’s ahead. I hear the click of what is letting go of me, of what I’m letting go.