Bittersweet
You used to be beside me.
In love
In bed
In the yard
In the car
At the kitchen stove
At the movies
Cooking ion the grill
Entertaining our friends
On vacation, traveling the known and the unknown
During the ups and the downs of marriage
Like a man who loves a woman
Like a child clinging
You filled the spaces in my life!
Now I’m returning to your favorite place, Bar Harbor, Maine.
With a dear friend. Without you, except the piece I hold in my heart.
I know I will run into you on the Shore Path by Albert’s Meadow, at the ice cream shop on Frenchman’s Pier, in Acadia on the broad, craggy ledges, waves crashing.
I’ll think about our youth when we crossed the sandbar at low tide to Bar Island.
A volume of Emily Dickinson, a fresh baguette, a bottle of wine, and lobsters freshly steamed and wrapped in newspaper. We climbed the hill and found our favorite spot by the old ruin as the hours passed blissfully, just us, two young lovers. We raced back with the ocean nearly lapping our ankles as the tide raced in.
The memory is real. The memory is bittersweet.
I can live with bittersweet.