My wish for you is simple: may you never experience pain.
Or sadness, or grief, or terror, or the anger that too often masks these emotions.
But that is a false wish, the type that I might have made one adolescent evening only to forget it the next day. It is an unachievable miracle, not fit for the stars.
So I don’t wish that for you at all.
Instead, I wish you a touchable sadness. The kind of sadness that is not pressed flat with an iron and laid to rest beneath the old quilts, but one that is shook out weekly and hung up like a flag for all passersby.
May your touchable sadness come with tears that feel like velvet. May it smell like the leaves that make it to December. May it fill you with a longing for a shadow that once held hands with yours.
May you nurture this touchable sadness. May you care for it like a child, a favorite plant. May you rest into a bittersweet smile as it shows you a slideshow of all you have ever held dear, but could not hold.
And may you sleep in flannel sheets, nestled up to your touchable sadness, dreaming of a world where my original wish is one come true.
